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THE DOCTOR, 



kc 



There is a kind of physiognomy in the titles of books no less than in 
the faces of men, by which a skilful observer will as well know what to 
expect from, the one as the other. — Butler's Remains. 






THE DOCTOR, 



&•(?. 




n^oWcs-< ^ou:^V\^sj 



IN TWO VOLUMES. 
VOL. I. 



NEW-YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, 

1860. 



PR 5^€^ 

l?66 






PRELUDE OF MOTTOES. 



Now they that like it may : the rest may choose. — G. Wither, 

Je veux a face descouverte qu'on sqache que je fay le fol. Et pourquoy 
ne me le sera-t-il permis, si le grand Solon dans Athenes, ne douta de le 
faire pour apporter un grand bien d sa Republique ? La Republique dont 
j'ay charge, est ce petit monde que Dieu aestably en moy ; pour la conser- 
vation duquel je ne scay meilleur moyen que de tromper mes afflictions 
parquelques honnestes jeuxd'esprit ; appellez-les bouffonneries siainsi le 
voulez. — Pasquiee. 

If you are so bold as to venture a blowing-up, look closely to it ! for the 
plot lies deadly deep, and 'twill be between your legs before you be aware 
of it. But of all things have a care of putting it in your pocket, for fear it 
takes fire, or runs away with your breeches. And if you can shun it, read 
it not when you are alone ; or at least not late in the evening ; for the 
venom is strongest about midnight, and seizes most violently upon the 
head when the party is by himself. I shall not tell you one line of what is 
in it ; and therefore consider well what you do, and look to yourself. But 
if you be resolved to meddle, be sure have a care of catching cold, and 
keep to a moderate diet ; for there is danger and jeopardy in it besides. — 
Dr. Eachard. 

— For those faults of barbarism, Doric dialect, extemporanean style, tau 
tologies, apish imitation, a rhapsody of rags gathered together from seve- 
ral dunghills, excrements of authors, toyes and fopperies, confusedly tum- 
bled out, without art, invention, judgment, wit, learning, harsh, raw, 
rude, phantasticall, absurd, insolent, indiscreet, ill-composed, indigested, 
vain, scurrile, idle, dull, and dry: — I confess all; ('tis partly affected j) 
thou canst not think worse of me than I do of rnyself. 'Tis not worth the 
reading ! I yield it. I desire thee not to lose time in perusing so vain a 
subject. I should be peradventure loath myself to read him or thee so wri- 
ting ; 'tis not opercB pretium. All I say is this, that I have precedents fey 
it. — Burton. 

A foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, 
apprehensions, motions, revolutions ; these are begot in the ventricle of 
memory, nourished in the womb oipia mater, and delivered upon the mel- 
lowing of the occasion. But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, 
and I am thankful for it. — Love's Labour^s Lost. 

If the world like it not, so much the worse for them. — Cowper. 



fill . PRELUDE OF MOTTOES. 

un boschetto, 

Donne per quelle givan fior cogliendo, 

Con diletto, co' quel, co' quel dicendo ; 

Eccolo, eccol ! . . che a ?— e fiordaliso ! 

Va la per le viole ; 

Piu cola per le rose, cole, cole, 

"Vaghe amorose. 

O me, che' I'prun mi punge ! 

Queir altra me v' aggmnge. 

U', u, 0, ch' e quel che salta? 

Un grille : un grille ! 

Venite qua, correte, 

Ramponzoli cogliete ; 

E' non con essi ! 

Si, son ! — colei o colei 

Vien qua, vien qua per funghi, un micolinp 

Piu cola, piu cola per sermoUino. 

Ugolino Ubaldini, or 
Franco Sacohetti, 

If the particulars seem too large, or to be over tediously insisted upon, 
consider in how many impertinent and triflmg discourses and actions' me 
Dest of us do consume far more hours than the perusal of this requires 
minutes, and yet think it no tediousness : and let them call to mind how 
many volumes this age imprints and reads which are foolish if not wicked. 
Let them be persuaded, likewise, that 1 have not written this for those 
who have no noed thereof, or to show my own wit or compendiousness, 
but to instruct the ignorant ; to whom I should more often speak m vain, 
if I did not otherwhile by repetitions and circumlocutions stir up their af- 
fections, and beat into their understandings the knowledge and feeling of 
those things which I deliver. Yea. let them know that 1 know those ex- 
pressions will be both pleasing and profitable to some which they imagine 
to be needless and superabundant ; and that I had rather twenty nice 
critics should censure me for a word here and there superfluous than that 
one of those other should want that which might explain my meanings to 
their capacities, and so make frustrate all my labour to those who have 
most need of it, and for whom it was chiefly intended. — G. Wither. 

Tempus ad hoc mecum latuit, portuque resedit, 

Nee fuit audaces impetus ire vias. 
Nunc animi venere ; juvat nunc denique funem 

Solvere : — 
Ancora sublata est ; terrae, portusque valete ! 

Imus ; habet ventos nostra carina suos. 

Wallius. 



POSTSCRIPT. 



•nder whose name has b'^c.i 
preserved in one of the proverbial sayings of the Greeks, 
because he lived in continual feaf of seeing his own :'tost. 
How often have I seen mifje while arranging these vuiutnes 
or publication, and carrying them through the press I 

Twenty years have elapsed since the intention of com- 
posing them was conceived, and the composition com- 
menced, in what manner and in what mood the reader will 
presently be made acquainted. The vicissitudes which in 
the course of those years have befallen every country in 
Europe are known to every one ; and the changes which, 
during such an interval, must have occurred in a private 
family, there are few who may not from their own sad ex- 
perience readily apprehend. 

Circumstances which when they were touched upon in 
these volumes were of present importance, and excited a 
lively interest, belong now to the history of the past. They 
who were then the great performers upon the theatre of pub- 
lic life have fretted their hour and disappeared from the 
stage. Many who were living and flourishing when their 
names were here sportively or severely introduced, are gone 
to their account. The domestic circle which the introduc- 
tion describes, has in the ordinary course of things been 
broken up ; some of its members are widely separated from 
others, and some have been laid to rest. The reader may 
well believe that certain passages which were written with 
most joyousness of heart, have been rendered purely painful 
to the writer by time and change : and that some of his 
sweetest thoughts come to him in chewing the cud, like 
wormwood and gall. But it is a wholesome bitterness. 



X POSTSCRIPT. 

He has neither expunged nor altered anything on any of 
these accounts. It would be weakness to do this on the 
score of his own remembrances, and in the case of allusions 
to public affairs and to pubhc men it would be folly. The 
almanac of the current year will be an old one as soon as 
next year begins. 

. It is the writer's determination to remain unknown ; and 
they who may suppose that 

" By certain signs here set in sundry place," 

they have discovered him, will deceive themselves. A 
Welsh triad says that the three unconcealable traits of a 
person by which he shall be known, are the glance of his 
eye, the pronunciation of his speech, and the mode of his 
self-motion ; in briefer English, his look, his voice, and 
his gait. There are no such characteristics by which an 
author can be identified. He must be a desperate manner- 
ist who can be detected by his style, and a poor proficient 
in his art if he cannot at any time so vary it, as to put the 
critic upon a false scent. Indeed, every day's experience 
shows that they who assume credit to themselves, and de- 
mand it from others for their discrimination in such things, 
are continually and ridiculously mistaken. 

On that side the author is safe ; he has a sure reliance 
upon the honour as well as the discretion of the very few to 
whom he is naturally or necessarily known ; and if the vari- 
ous authors to whom the book will be ascribed by report, 
should derive any gratification from the perusal, he requests 
of them in return that they will favour his purpose by allow- 
ing such reports to pass uncontradicted. 



CONTENTS. 



PRELUDE OF MOTTOES.— Page v. 

POSTSCRIPT.— p. vii. 

CHAPTER VII. A. I.— p. 21. 

A FAMILY PARTY AT A NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR'S, 

Good sir, reject it not, although it bring 
Appearances of some fantastic thing 
At first unfolding ! 

George Wither to the King. 

CHAPTER VI. A. I.—p. 23. 

SHOWING THAT AN AUTHOR MAY MORE EASILY BE KEPT AWAKK 
BY HIS OWN IMAGINATIONS THAN PUT TO SLEEP BY THEM 
HIMSELF, WHATEVER MAY BE THEIR EFFECT UPON HIS READERS. 

Thou sleepest worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up her 
lodging in a cat's ear ; a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie 
with thee, would cry out as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow. 

Webster. 

CHAPTER V. A. I.—p. 24. 

SOMETHING CONCERNING THE PHILOSOPHY OF DREAMS, AND THE 
author's EXPERIENCE IN AERIAL HORSEMANSHIP. 

If a dream should come in now to make you afeard, 
With a windmill on his head and bells at his beard, 
Would you straight wear your spectacles here at your toes. 
And your boots on your brows and your spurs on your nose ? 
\* Ben Jonson. 



Xll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. A. I.— p. 26. 

A CONVERSATION AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE. 

Te condamne mon coq-a-l'ane qui un jour en jnstifiera le bon sens. 

La Pketieusb. 

CHAPTER HI. A. I.— p. 27. 

THE UTILITY OF POCKETS. A COMPLIMENT PROPERLY RECEIVED. 

La tasca e propria cosa da Christiani. 

Benedetto Varchi. 

CHAPTER H. A. I.— p. 30. 

CONCERNING DEDICATIONS, PRINTERS' TYPES, AND IMPERIAL INK. 

II y aura des clefs, et des ouvertures de mes secrets. ^ 

La Pretieose. 

DEDICATION.— p. 83. 
CHAPTER I. A. I.— p. 35. 

NO BOOK CAN BE COMPLETE WITHOUT A PREFACE. 

I see no cause but men may pick their teeth, 
Though Brutus with a sword did kill himself. 

Taylor, the Water Poet 

ANTE-PREFAC E.— p. 37. 

I here present thee with a hive of bees, laden some with wax, and some 
with honey. Fear not to approach ! There are no wasps, there are no 
hornets here. If some wanton bee should chance to buzz about thine 
ears, stand thy ground and hold thy hands ; there's none will sting thee if 
thou strike not lirst. If any do, she hath honey in her bag will cure thee 

too. — QCJARLES. 

P R E F A C E.— p. 39, 

Oh for a quill plucked from a seraph's wing ! — Young. 

INITIAL CHAPTER.— p. 43. 

'E^ ou lr\ Tel vpS)Ta. — HoMER. 



CONTENTS. Xm 



THE DOCTOR, 



Eccoti il libro ; mettm ben cura 
Iddio t' ajuti e dia buona ventura. 

Orl. Innam. 



CHAPTER I. P. I.— p. 45. 

THE SUBJECT OF THIS HISTORY AT HOME AND AT TEA. 

If thou be a severe sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee 
to be a competent judge. — Izaak Walton. 

CHAPTER II. P. I.— p. 46. 

WHEREIN CERTAIN QUESTIONS ARE PROPOSED CONCERNING TIME, 
PLACE, AND PERSONS. 

Quis? quid? ubi? quibus auxiliis ? cur? quomodo? quando? 

Technical Verse. 

CHAPTER III. P. I.— p. 47. 

WHOLESOME OBSERVATIONS UPON THE VANITY OF FAME. 

Wliosoever shall address himself to write of matters of instruction, or of 
any other argument of importance, it behooveth that before he enter there- 
into, he should resolutely determine with himself in what order he will 
handle the same ; so shall he best accomplish that he hath undertaken, 
and inform the understanding, and help the memory of the reader. — Gwil- 
LIM's Display of Heraldry. 



CHAPTER IV. P. I.— p. 50. 

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE OF DR. DOVE, WITH THE DESCRIPTION OF A 
yeoman's HOUSE IN THE WEST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE A HUN- 
DRED YEARS AGO. 

Non possidentem multa vocaveris 
Recte beatum ; rectius occupat 
Nomen beati, qui Deorum 
Muneribus «apienter uti, 
Duramque caliet pauperiem pati, 
Pejusque letho fiagitium timet. 

Horace, 1. 4, ode 9. 
VOL. I. — 2 



XIV CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER V. P. I.— p. 53. 

EXTENSION OF THE SCIENCE OF PHYSIOGNOMY, WITH SOME RE- 
MARKS UPON THE PRACTICAL USES OF CRANIOLOGY. 

Hanc ergo scientiam blande excipiamus, hilariterque amplectamur, ut 
vere nostram et de nobismet ipsis tractantem ; quam qui non amat, quam 
qui non amplectitur, nee phUosophiam amat, neque suae vitae discrimina 
carat. — Baptista Pokta. 



CHAPTER VI. P. I.— p. 56. 

A COLLECTION OF BOOKS, NONE OF WHICH ARE INCLUDED AMONG THK 
PUBLICATIONS OF ANY SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF KNOW- 
LEDGE RELIGIOUS OR PROFANE HAPPINESS IN HUMBLE LIFE. 

Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis, 
Quern non mordaci resplendens gloria fuco 
Solicitat, non fastosi mala gaudia luxus, 
Sed tacitos sinit ire dies, et paupere cultu 
Exigit innocuae tranquilla sHentia vitae, 

POLITIAN. 



CHAPTER VH. P. I.--p. 61. 



RUSTIC PHILOSOPHY AN EXPERIMENT UPON MOONSHINE. 

Quien comienza en juventud 
A bien obrar, 
Senal es de no errar 
En senetud. 

Proverbios del Marques de Santillana. 



A 



CHAPTER Vni. P. I.— p. 64. j 

A KIND SCHOOLMASTER AND A HAPPY SCHOOLBOY. 

Though happily thou wilt say that wands be to be wrought when they ' 

are green, lest they rather break than bend when they be dry, yet know ; 

also that he that bendeth a twig because he would see if it would bow by : 

strength may chance to have a crooked tree when he would have a ] 
straight.— EuPHUES. 



CONTENTS. XV 



INTERCHAPTER I.— p. 66 



REMA^RKS IN THE PRINTING OFFICE THE AUTHOR CONFESSES A 

DISPOSITION TO GARRULITY— PROPRIETY OF PROVIDING CER- 
TAIN CHAPTERS FOR THE RECEPTION OF HIS EXTRANEOUS DIS- 
COURSE CHOICE OF AN APPELLATION FOR SUCH CHAPTERS. 

Perque vices aliquid, quod tempera longa videri 
Non sinat, in medium vacuas referamus ad aures. 

Ovid. 



CHAPTER IX. P. I.— p. 69. 

EXCEPTIONS TO ONE OF KING SOLOMON's RULES A WINTEr's 

EVENING AT DANIEL's FIRESIDE. 

These are my thoughts ; I might have spun them out into a greater 
length ; but 1 think a little plot of ground, thick sown, is better than a 
great field, vvhich, for the most part of it, lies fallow.— Norris. 



CHAPTER X. P. I.— p. 72. 

ONE WHO WAS NOT SO WISE AS HIS FRIENDS COULD HAVE WISHED, 
AND YET QUITE AS HAPPY AS IF HE HAD BEEN WISER — NEPOTISM 
NOT CONFINED TO POPES. 

There are of madmen as there are of tame, 

All humoured not alike. Some 

Apish and fantastic ; 

And though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image 

So blemished and defaced, yet do they act 

Such antic and such pretty lunacies. 

That spite of sorrow, they will make you smile. 

Dkkeer 



CHAPTER XI. P. I.— p. 75. 

A. WORD TO THE READER, SHOWING WHERE WE ARE, AND HOW WB 
OAME HERE, AND WHEREFORE ; AND WHITHER WE ARE GOING. 

'Tis my venture 
On your retentive wisdom. 

Ben Jonson. 



XVI CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XII. p. I.— p. 78. 

A HISTORY NOTICED WHICH IS WRITTEN BACKWARD THE CON- 
FUSION OF TONGUES AN ESPECIAL EVIL FOR SCHOOLBOYS. 

For never in the long and tedious tract 
Of slavish grammar was I made to plod ; 

No tyranny of Rules my patience rackt ; 
1 served no prenticehood to any Rod ; 

But in the freedom of the Practic way 

Learnt to go right, even when I went astray. 

Dr. Beaumont. 

CHAPTER XIII. P. I.— p. 80. 

A DOUBT CONCERNING SCHOOL BOOKS, WHICH WILL BE DEEMED 
HERETICAL ; AND SOME ACCOUNT OF AN EXTRAORDINARY SUB- 
STITUTE FOR OVID OR VIRGIL. 

They say it is an ill mason that refuseth any stone ; and there is no 
knowledge but in a skilful hand serves, either positively as it is, or else to 
illustrate some other knowledge. — Herbert'' s Remains. 



CHAPTER XIV. P. I.— p. 85. 



AN OBJECTION ANSWERED. 



Is this then your wonder ? 
Nay then you shall under- 
stand more of my skill. 

Ben Jonson. 



CHAPTER XV. P. I.— p. 87. 

THE AUTHOR VENTURES AN OPINION AGAINST THE PREVAILING 
WISDOM OF MAKING CHILDREN PREMATURELY WISE. 

Pray you, use your freedom ; 
And 80 far, if you please, allow me mine, 
To hear you only ; not to be compelled 
To take your moral potions. 

Massinger. 

CHAPTER XVI. P. I.— p. 89. 

USE AND ABUSE OF STORIES IN REASONING, WITH A WORD IN 
BEHALF OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS, AND IN REPROOF OF THE EARL 
OF LAUDERDALE. 

My particular inclination moves me in controversy especially to approve 
his choice that said, Fortia mallem quam formosa. — Dr. Jackson. 



CONTENTS. XVU 

INTERCHAPTER II.— p. 91. 

ABALLIBOOZOBANGANORRIBO. 

lo'l dico dunque e dicol che ognun m'ode. 

Benedetto Vaechi. 

CHAPTER XVII. P. I.— p. 94. 

THE HAPPINESS OF HAVING A CATHOLIC TASTE. 

There's no want of meat, sir ; 
Portly and curious viands are prepared 
To please all kinds of appetites. 

Massinger. 



CHAPTER XVni. P. I.— p. 97. 

all's well THAT ENDS WELL. 

Ta 6^uv (TTinvriaSSJ — vird rov \6yov f^avay^a^d/xevos i7n[j.vT](y^r}(jonai. — Herodotus. 

CHAPTER XIX. P. I.— p. 99. 

A CONVERSATION WITH MISS GRAVEAIRS. 

Operi suscepto inserviendum fuit : so Jacobus Mycillus pleadeth for him- 
self in his translation of Lucian's Dialogues, and so do I ; 1 must and 
will perform my task. — Burton. 

CHAPTER XX. P. I.— p. 102. 

HOW TO MAKE GOLD. 

L'alchimista non travaglia a voto 
Ei cerca I'oro, ei cerca I'oro, io dico * 
Ch' ei cerca I'oro ; e s' ei giungesse in porto 
Fora ben per se stesso e per aitrui. 
L'oro e somma posanza infra mortal! ; 
Chiedine a cavalier, chiedine a dame, 
Chiedine a tutto il mondo. 

Chiabrera. 



XVlll CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XXL P. I.— p. 106. 

A DOUBT CONCERNING THE USES OF PHILOSOPHY. 

El comicnzo de salud 
es el saber, 
distinguir y conocer 
qual es virtud. 

Proverbios del Marques de Santillancu, 



CHAPTER XXH. P. I.— p. 107. 

Tdv 6' dna[iEi(iSii£voS. 

O felice colui, che intender puote 
Le cagion de le cose di natura, 
Che al piu di que' che vivon sono ignote ; 

E sotto il pie si mette ogni paura 
De fati, e de la morte, ch'^ si trista, 
Ne di vulgo gli cal, ne d'altro ha cura. 

Tansillo. 

CHAPTER XXIH. P. L— p. 111. 

ROWLAND DIXON AND HIS COMPANY OF PUPPETS. 

Alii se ve tan eficaz el llanto, 
las fabulas y historias retratadas, 
que parece verdad, y es duke encanto. 

* * * * 

Y para el vulgo rudo, que ignorante 

aborrece el manjar costoso, guisa 

el plato del gracioso extravagante ; 
Con que les hartas de contento y risa, 

gustando de mirar sayal grossero, 

mas que sutily Candida camisa. 

Joseph Ortiz de Villena. 



CHAPTER XXIV. P. I.— p. 110. 

QUACK AND NO QUACK, BEING AN ACCOUNT OF DR. GREEN AND HIS 
MAN KEMP — POPULAR MEDICINE, HERBARY, THEORY OF SIGNA- 
TURES, WILLIAM DOVE, JOHN WESLEY, AND BAXTER. 

Hold thy hand ! health's dear maintainer ; 
Life perchance may burn the stronger : 
Having substance to maintain her, 
She untouched may last the longer. 
When the artist goes about 
To redress her flame, I doubt 
Oftentimes he snulfs it out. 

QUARLES. 



CONTENTS. XIX 

CHAPTER XXV. P. I.— p. 128. 
Hiatus valde lacrymahilis. 

Time flies away fast, 
The while we never remember 

How soon our life here 

Grows old with the year 
That dies with the next December ! 

Herrick. 



CHAPTER XXVI. P. I.— p. 129. 

DANIEL AT DONCASTER ; THE REASON WHY HE WAS DESTINED 
FOR THE MEDICAL PROFESSION RATHER THAN HOLY ORDERS ; 
AND SOME REMARKS UPON SERMONS. 

Je ne veux dissimuler, amy lecteur, que je n'aye bien preveu, et me tiens 
pour deiiement adverty, que ne puis eviter la reprehension d'aucuns, et les 
calomnies de plusieurs— ausquels c'est escrit desplaira du tout. — Chris- 

TOFLE DE HeRICOURT. 



CHAPTER XXVn. P. I.— p. 135. 

A PASSAGE IN PROCOPIUS IMPROVED A STORY CONCERNING URIM 

AND THUMMIM ; AND THE ELDER DANIEL's OPINION OF THE PRO- 
FESSJON OF THE LAW. 

Here is Domine Picklock, 
My man of law, solicits all my causes. 
Follows my business, makes and compounds my quarrels 
Between my tenants and me ; sows all my strifes, 
And reaps them too, troubles the country for me. 
And vexes any neighbour that I please. 

Ben Jonson. 



CHAPTER XXVni. P. I.— p. 137. 

PETER HOPKINS — EFFECTS OF TIME AND CHANGE DESCRIPTION 

OF HIS DWELLINGHOUSE. 

Combien de changemens depuis que suis au monde, 
Qui n'est qu' un point du terns ! 

Pasquier. 



XX CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XXIX. P. 1.— p. 139. 

a hint of reminiscence to the reader the clock of st. 

George's — a word in honour of archdeacon markham. 

There is a ripe season for everything, and if you slip that or anticipate 
it, you dim the grace of the matter, be it never so good. As we say by 
way of proverh that a hasty birth brings forth blind whf Ips, so a good 
tale tumbled out before the time is ripe for it, is ungrateful to the heare: — 
Bishop Haokett. 



CHAPTER XXX. P. I.— p. 141. 

THE OLD BELLS RUNG TO A NEW TUNE. 

If the bell have any sides the clapper will find 'em. 

Ben Jonson 

CHAPTER XXXI. P. T.— p. 147. 

MORE CONCERNING BELLS. 

Lord, ringing changes all our bells hath marr'd ; 

Jangled they have and jarr'd 
So long, they're out of tune, and out of frame ; 

They seem not now the same. 
Put them in frame anew, and once begin 
To tune them so, that they may chime all in ! 

Herbert. 

CHAPTER XXXII. P. I.— p. 149. 

AN INTRODUCTION TO CERTAIN PRELIMINARIES ESSENTIAL TO THB 
PROGRESS OF THIS WORK. 

Mas demos ya el assiento en lo importante, 
Que el tiempo huye del mundo por la posta. 

Balbuena. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. P. I.— p. 151. 

DONCASTRIANA THE RIVER DON. 

Rivers from bubbling springs 
Have rise at first ; and great from abject things. 

MlDDLETON. 



CONTENTS. XXI 



CHAPTER XXXIV. P. I.— p. 155. 

MORAL INTEREST OF TOPOGRAPHICAL WORKS LOCAL ATTACH- 
MENT. 

Let none our author rudely blame 

Who from the story has thus long digress'd; 

But for his righteous pains may his fair fame 
For ever travel, while his ashes rest. 

\ Sir Wu.i.iAM Davenant. 



INTERCHAPTER III.— p. 159. 

THE AUTHOR QUESTIONS THE PROPRIETY OF PERSONIFYING CIR- 
CUMSTANCE DENIES THE UNITY AND INDIVIS.BIMTY OF THS 

PUBLIC, AND AlAY EVEN BE SUSPECTED OF DOUBTING ITS OM 
NISCiENCE AND ITS INt ALLIBILITY. 

Ha forse 
Testa la plebe, ove si chiuda in vece 
Di senno, altro che nebhia ? o forma voce 
Chi sta piu saggia, che un bebii d'armento ? 

CUIABRERA. 



CHAPTER XXXV. P. I.— p. 160. 

DONCASTRIANA POTTERIC CARR SOMETHING CONCERNING THE 

MEANS OF EMPLOYING THE POOR, AND BETTERING THEIR CON- 
DITION. 

Why should I sowen draf out of my fist, 
When I may sowen wheat, if that me hst? 

Chaucer. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. P. I.— p. 164. 

REMARKS ON AN OPINION OF MR. CRABBe's — TOPOGRAPHICAL 
POETRY DRAYTON. 

Do, pious marble, let thy readers know 

What they and what their children owe 

To Drayton's name, whose sacred dust 

We recommend unto thy trust. 

Protect his memory, and preserve his story ; 

Remain a lasting monument of his glory ; 

And when thy ruins shall disclaim 

To be the treasurer of his name, 

His name that cannot fade, shall be 

An everlasting monument to thee. 

Epitaph in Westminster Abbey. 



XXll CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. P. I.— p. 166. 

ANECDOTES OF PETER HEYLYN AND LIGHTFOOT, EXEMPLIFYING 
THAT GREAT KNOWLEDGE IS NOT ALNVAYS APPLICABLE TO 
LITTLE things; AND THAT AS CHARlPY BEGINS AT HOME, SO 
IT MAY WITH EQUAL TRUTH SOMETIMES BE SAID THAT KNOW- 
LEDGE ENDS THERE. 

A scholar in his study knows ihf. stars, 
Their motion and their influence, which are fix'd. 
And which are wandering; can decipher seas, 
And give each several land his proper bounds . 
But set him to the compass, he's to seek. 
Where a plain pilot can direct his course 
From hence unto both the ndies. 

Heywood. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. P. I.— p. 170. 

THE READER IS LED TO INFER THAT A TRAVELLER WHO STOPS 
UPON THE WAY TO SKETCH, BOTANIZE, ENTOMOLOGIZE, OR MIN- 
ERALOGIZE, TRAVELS WITH MORE PLEASURE AND PROFIT TO 
HIMSELF THAN IF HE WERE IN THE MAIL COACH. 

Non servio materia sed indulgeo ; quae quo ducit sequendum est, non 
quo iijvitat. — Seneca. 



INTERCHAPTER IV.— p. 173. 

ETYMOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES CONCERNING THE REMAINS OF VARI- 
OUS TRIBES OR FAMILIES MENTIONED IN SCRIPTURAL HISTORY. 

All things are big with jest ; nothing that's plain 
But may be witty if thou hast the vein. 

Herbert. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. P. I.— p. 174. 

A CHAPTER FOR THE INFORMATION OF THOSE WHO MAY VISIT 

DONCASTER, AND ESPECIALLY OF THOSE WHO FREQUENT THB ] 

RACES THERE. j 

i 

My good lord, there is a corporation, ( 

A body — a kind of bodj\ ! 

MiDDLETON. 



CONTENTS. XXlll 



CHAPTER XL. P. I.— p. 180. 

REMARKS ON THE ART OF VERBOSITY A RULE OF COCCEIUS, ANB 

ITS APPLICATION TO THE LANGUAGE AND PRACTICE OF THE LAW. 

If they which employ their labour and travail about the public adminis- 
tration of justice follow it only as a trade, with unquenchable and uncon 
scionable thirst of gain, being pot in heart persuaded that justice is God's 
own work, and themselves his agents in this business — the sentence of right 
God's own verdict, and themselves his priests to deliver it — formalities of 
justice do but serve to smother right, and that which was necessarily or- 
dained for the common good, is through shameful abuse made the cause 
of common misery. — Hooker. 



CHAPTER XLI. P. I.-p. 181. 

REVENUE OF THE CORPORATION OF DONCASTER WELL APPLIED- 
DONCASTER RACES. 

Play not for gain, but sport : who plays for more 
Than he can lose with pleasure, stakes his heart ; 
Perhaps his wife's too, and whom she hath bore. 

Herbert. 



INTERCHAPTER V.— p. 184. 

WHEREIN THE AUTHOR MAKES KNOWN HIS GOOD INTENTIONS TO 
ALL READERS, AND OFFERS GOOD ADVICE TO SOME OF THEM. 

I can write, and talk too, as soft as other men, with submission to better 
judgments, and 1 leave it to you, gentlemen. I am but one, and I alioays distrust 
myself. I only hint my thoughts. You'll please to consider whether you will 
not think that it may seem to deserve your consideration. This is a taking way 
of speaking. But much good may do them that use it ! — Asgill. 



CHAPTER XLH. P. I.— p. 186. 

DONCASTER CHURCH THE RECTORIAL TITHES SECURED BY ARCH 

BISHOP SHARP FOR HIS OWN FAMILY. 

Say, ancient edifice, thyself with years 
Grown gray, how long upon the hill has stood 
Thy weather-bravijig tower, and silent mark'd 
The human leaf in constant bud and fall ? 
The generations of deciduous man 
How often hast thou seen them pass away ! 

HURDIS. 



XXIV CONTENTS - 



CHAPTER XLIII. P. I.— p. 188. 

ANTIQUITIES OF DONCASTER THE DE^ MATRES SAXON FONT- 

THE CASTLE THE HALL CROSS. 

Vieux monuments — 

Las, peu a peu cendre vous devenez, 

Fable du peuple et publiques rapines ! 

Et bien qu'au Temps pour un temps facent guerre 

Les bastimens, si est ce que le Temps 

Oeuvres et noms finablement atterre. 

Joachim du Bellay. 



CHAPTER XLIV. P. I.— p. 191. 

HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH DONCASTER THOM- 
AS, EARL OF LANCASTER EDWARD IV. ASKE's INSURRECTION 

ILLUSTRIOUS VISITERS — JAMES I. BARNABEE CHARLES I. 

CHURCH LIBRARY. 

They unto whom we shall appear tedious, are in nowise injured by us, 
because it is in their own hands to spare that labour which they are not 
willing to endure. — Hookek. 



CHAPTER XLV. P. I.— p. 194. 

CONCERNING THE WORTHIES, OR GOOD MEN, WHO WERE NATIVES 
OF DONCASTER OR OTHERWISE CONNECTED WITH THAT TOWN. 

Vir bonus est quis ? 

Terknck. 



INTERCHAPTER VI.— p. 196. 

CONTINGENT CAUSES — PERSONAL CONSIDERATIONS INDUCED BY RE- 
FLECTING ON THEM THE AUTHOR TREMBLES FOR THE PAST. 

Vereis que no hay lazada desasida 

De nudo y de pendencia soberana ; 
Ni a poder trastornar la orden del cielo 

Las fuerzas llegan, ni ei saber del suelo. 

Balbuexa. 



CONTENTS. XXV 



CHAPTER XLVI. P. I.— p. 198. 

DANIEL dove's ARRIVAL AT DONCASTER THE ORGAN IN ST 

George's church — the pulpit — mrs. neale's benefaction. 

Non uUa Musis pagina gratior 
Quam (juse severis ludicra jungere 
Novit, fatigatamque nugis 
Utilibus recreate mentem. 

Dr. Johnson. 



CHAPTER XLVn. P. I.— p. 203. 

DONCASTRIANA guy's death SEARCH FOR HIS TOMBSTONE III 

ingleton churchyard. 

Go to the dull churchyard, and see 
Those hillocks of mortality, 
Where proudest man is only found 
By a small hillock on the ground. 

Tixall Poetry. 



CHAPTER XLVni. P. I.— p. 205. 

A father's misgivings CONCERNING HIS SON's DESTINATION— 

PETER HOPKINS'S GENEROSITY DANIEL IS SENT ABROAD TO 

GRADUATE IN MEDICINE. 

Heaven is the magazine wherein He puts 
Both good and evil ; Prayer's the key that shuts 
And opens this great treasure : 'tis a key 
"Whose wards are Faith, and Hope, and Charity. 
Wouldst thou present a judgment due to sin ? 
Turn but the key and thou mayst lock it in. 
Or wouldst thou have a blessing fall upon thee ? 
Open the door, and it will shower on thee ! 

QUARLES. 



XXVI CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XLIX. P. I.— p. 207. 

CONCERNING THE INTEREST WHICH DANIEL THE ELDER TOOK IN 
THE DUTCH WAR, AND MORE ESPECIALLY IN THE SIEGE AND 
PROVIDENTIAL DELIVERY OF LEYDEN. 

Glory to thee in thine omnipotence, 

O Lord who art our shield and our defence, 

And dost dispense, 

As seerneth best to thine unerring will, 

(Which passeth mortal sense,) 

The lot of victory still ; 

Edging sometimes with might the sword unjust/ 

And bowing to the dust. 

The rightful cause, that so such seeming ill 

May thme appointed purposes fulfil; 

Sometimes, as in this late auspicious hour 

For which our hymns we raise. 

Making the wicked feel thy present power , 

Glory to thee and praise. 

Almighty God, by whom our strength was given ' 

Glory to thee, O Lord of earth and heaven ! 

SOUTHEY. 



CHAPTER L. P. L— p. 210. 

VOYAGE TO ROTTERDAM AND LEYDEN THE AUTHOR CANNOT 

TARRY TO DESCRIBE THAT CITY — WHAT HAPPENED THERE TO 
DANIEL DOVE. 

He took great content, exceeding delight in that his voyage. As who 
doth not that shall attempt the like ? For peregrination charms our senses 
with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy 
that never travelled, a kind of prisoner, and pity his case that from hia 
cradle to his old age he beholds the same still ; still, still, the same, the 
same ' — Burton. 



CHAPTER LI. P. I.— p. 213. 

ARMS OF LEYDEN DANIEL DOVE, M.D. A LOVE STORY, STRANGE 

BUT TRUE. 

Oye el extraiio caso, advierte y siente ; 
Suceso es raro, mas verdad ha sido. 

Balbuena. 



CONTENTS. XXVU 



CHAPTER LII. P. I.— p. 216. 

SHOWING HOW THE YOUNG STUDENT FELL IN LOVE AND HOW 

HE MA.DE THE BEST USE OF HIS MISFORTUNE. 

II creder, donnevaghe, e cortesia, 
Quando colui che scrive o che favella, 

Fossa essere sospetto di bugia, 
Per dir quale osa troppo rara e bella. 

Dunque chi ascolta questa istoria mea 
E non la crede frottola o novella 

Ma cosa vera — come ella e di fatto, 

Fa che di lui mi chiami soddisfatto 

E pure che mi diate plena fede, 

De la dubbiezza altrui poco mi cale. 

RlCCIARDETTO. 



CHAPTER LHI. P. I.— p. 218. 

OF THE VARIOUS WAYS OF GETTING IN LOVE A CHAPTER CON- 
TAINING SOME USEFUL OBSERVATIONS, AND SOME BEAUTIFUL 
POETRY. 

Let cavillers know, that as the Lord John answered the queen in that 
Italian Guazzo, an old, a grave, discreet man is fittest to discourse of love 
matters ; because he hath Ukely more experience, observed more, hath 
a more staid judgment, can better discern, resolve, discuss, advise, give 
better cautions and more solid precepts, better inform his auditors in such 
a subject, and by reason of his riper years, sooner divert. — Burton. 



CHAPTER LIV. P. I.— p. 221. 

MORE CONCERNING LOVE AND MARRIAGE, AND MARRIAGE WITHOUT 
LOVE. 

Nay, Cupid, pitch thy trammel where thou please. 
Thou canst not fail to catch such fish as these. 

QUARLES. 



CHAPTER LV. P. I.— p. 223. 

THE author's LAST VISIT TO DONCASTER. 

Fuere quondam hsec sed fuere ; 

Nunc ubi sint, rogitas? Id annos 
Scire hos oportet scilicet. O bonae 
Musae, O Lepores — O Charites merae ! 

O gaudia offuscata nullis 

Litibus ! O sine nube soles ! 

Janus Douza. 



XXVlll CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER LVI. P. I.— p. 226. 

A TRUCE WITH MELANCHOLY— GENTLEMEN SUCH AS THEY WERE 

IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1747 A HINT TO YOUNG LADIES 

CONCERNING THEIR GREAT-GRANDMOTHERS. 

Fashions that are now called new, 
Have been worn by more than you ; 
Elder times have used the same, 
Though these new ones get the name. 

MiDDLETON. 



CHAPTER LVn. P. I.— p. 228. 

iuN ATTEMPT IS MADE TO REMOVE THE UNPLEASANT IMPRESSION 
PRODUCED UPON THE LADIES BY THE DOCTOr's TIE WIG AND 
HIS SUIT OF SNUFF-COLOURED DITTOS. 



_ So fuU of shapes is fancy, 
That it alone is high fantastical. 

Twelfth Night. 



CHAPTER LVIII. P. I.— p. 229. 

CONCERNING THE PORTRAIT OF DR. DANIEL DOVE. 

The sure traveller, 
Though he alight sometimes, still goeth on. 

HEKBKnT. 



THE DOCTOR, 



CHAPTER VII. A. I. 

A FAMILY PARTY AT A NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR'S. 

Good sir, reject it not, although it bring 
Appearances of some fantastic thing 
At first unfolding ! 

George Wither to the King. 

I WAS in the fourth nig-ht of the story of the doctor and 
his horse, and had broken it off, not hke Scheherezade be- 
cause it was time to get up, but because it v»^as time to go to 
bed. It was at thirty-five minutes after ten o'clock, on the 
20th of July, in the year of our Lord 1813. I finished m^ 
glass of punch, tinkled the spoon against its side, as if ma- 
king music to my meditations, and having my eyes fixed upon 
the Bhow Begum, who was sitting opposite to me at the 
head of her own table, I said, " It ought to be written in a 
book !" 

There had been a heavy thunder storm in the afternoon; 
and though the thermometer had fallen from 78 to 70, still 
the atmosphere was charged. If that mysterious power by 
which the nerves convey sensation and make their impulses 
obeyed be (as experiments seem to indicate) identical with 
the galvanic fluid ; and if the galvanic and electric fluids be 
the same, (as philosophers have more than surmised;) and if 
the lungs (according to a happy hypothesis) elaborate for us 
from the light of heaven this pabulum of the brain, and ma- 
terial essence, or essential matter of genius, it may be that 
the ethereal fire which I had inhaled so largely during the 
day produced the bright conception, or at least impregnated 
and quickened the latent seed. The punch, reader, had no 
share in it. 

I had spoken as it were abstractedly, and the look which 
accompanied the words was rather cogitative than regardant. 



22 THE DOCTOR. 

The Bhow Beg-um laid down her snuffbox and replied, 
entering into the feehng, as well as echoing the words, " It 
ought to be written in a book — certainly it ought." 

They may talk as they will of the dead languages. Our 
auxiliary verbs give us a power which the ancients, with all 
their varieties of mood, and inflections of tense, never could 
obtain. " It must be written in a book," said I, encouraged 
by her manner. The mood was the same, the tense was the 
same ; but the gradation of meaning was marked in a way 
which a Greek or Latin grammarian might have envied as 
weil as admired. 

"Pshaw! nonsense! stuff!" said my wife's eldest sister, 
who was sitting at the right hand of the Bhow Begum; "] 
say write it in a book indeed !" My wife's youngest sister 
was sitting diagonally opposite to the last speaker: she lifted 
up her eyes and smiled. It was a smile which expressed 
the same opinion as the late vituperative tones; there was 
as much of incredulity in it; but more of wonder and less of 
vehemence. 

My wife was at my left hand, making a cap for her young- 
est daughter, and with her tortoise shell paper workbox 
before her. I turned towards her and repeated the words, 
" It must be written in a book !" But I smiled while I was 
speaking, and was conscious of that sort of meaning in my 
eyes, which calls out contradiction for the pleasure of sport- 
ing with it. 

" Write it in a book?" she replied, " I am sure you won't!" 
and she looked at me with a frown. Poets have written 
much upon their ladies' frowns, but I do not remember that 
they have ever described the thing with much accuracy. 
When my wife frowns, two perpendicular wrinkles, each 
three quarters of an inch in length, are formed in the fore- 
head, the base of each resting upon the top of the nose, and 
equi-distant from each other. The poets have also attribu- 
ted dreadful effects to the frown of those whom they love. 
I cannot say that I ever experienced anything very formida- 
ble in my wife's. At present she knew her eyes would give 
the lie to it if they looked at me steadily for a moment; so 
they wheeled to the left about quick, off at a tangent, in a 
direction to the Bhow Begum, and then she smiled. She 
could not prevent the smile ; but she tried to make it scorn- 
ful. 

My wife's nephew was sitting diagonally with her, and 
opposite his mother, on the left hand of the Bhow Begum. 
"Oh!" he exclaimed, " it ought to be written in a book! it 
will be a glorious book! write it, uncle, I beseech you!" 
My wife's nephew is a sensible lad. He reads my writings, 
likes my stories, admires my singing, and thinks as I do in 
polities : a youth of parts and considerable promise. 

*'He will write it!" said the Bhow Begum, taking up her 



THE DOCTOR. 23 

snuffbox, and accompanying the words with a nod of satis- 
faction and encouragement, " He will never be so foolish!" 
said my wife. My wife's eldest sister rejoined, " He is 
foolish enough for anything." 



CHAPTER VI. A. I. 

SHOWING THAT AN AUTHOR MAY MORE EASILY BE KEPT AWAKE 
BY HIS OWN IMAGINATIONS THAN PUT TO SLEEP BY THEM 
HIMSELF, WHATEVER MAY BE THEIR EFFECT UPON HIS READERS. 

Thou sleepest worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up her 
lodging in a cat's ear ; a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie 
with thee, would cry out as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow. 

Webster. 

When I ought to have been asleep the " unborn pages 
crowded on my soul." The chapters ante-initial and post- 
initial appeared in delightful prospect "long drawn out:" 
the beginning, the middle, and the end were evolved before 
me: the whole spread itself forth, and then the parts unrav- 
elled themselves and danced the hays. The very types 
rose in judgment against me, as if to persecute me for the 
tasks which during so many years I had imposed upon them. 
Capitals and small letters, pica and long primer, brevier and 
bourgeois, Enghsh and nonpareil, minion and pearl, Romans 
and Italics, black letter and red, passed over my inward sight. 
The notes of admiration ! ! ! stood straight up in view as I 
lay on the one side; and when I turned on the other to avoid 
them, the notes of interrogation cocked up their hump 
backs'? ? ■? Then came to recollection the various incidents 
of the eventful tale. " Visions of glory spare my aching 
sight !" The various personages, like spectral faces in a fit 
of the vapours, stared at me through my eyelids. The doc- 
tor oppressed me like an incubus; and for the horse — he 
became a perfect nightmare. "Leave me, leave me to 
repose !" 

Twelve by the kitchen clock ! — still restless ! One ! oh, 
doctor, for one of thy comfortable composing draughts! 
Two ! here's a case of insomnolence. I, who in summer 
close my lids as instinctively as the daisy when the sun goes 
down ; and who in winter could hibernate as well as bruin, 
were I but provided with as much fat to support me during 
the season, and keep the wick of existence burning; I, who, 
if my pedigree were properly made out, should be found to 



24 THE DOCTOR. 

have descended from one of the seven sleepers, and from the 
sleepmg beauty in the wood. 

I put my arms out of bed. I turned the pillov/ for the 
sake of applying a cold surface to ray cheek. I stretched 
my feet into the cold corner. I listened to the river, and to 
the ticking- of my watch. I thought of all sleepy sounds and 
all soporific things : the flow of water, the hunmiing of bees, 
the motion of a boat, the waving of a field of corn, the nod- 
ding of a mandarin's head on the chimneypiece, a horse in a 
mill, the opera, Mr. Humdrum's conversation, Mr. Proser's 
poems, Mr. Laxative's speeches, Mr. Lengthy's sermons. I 
tried the device of my own childhood, and fancied that the 
bed revolved with me round and round. Still the doctor 
visited me as perseveringly as if I had been his best patient ; 
and, call up what thoughts I would to keep him off, the horse 
charged through them ah. 

At last ^lorpheus reminded me of Dr. Torpedo's divinity 
lectures, where the voice, the manner, the matter, even the 
very atmosphere, and the streamy candlehght were all alike 
somnific ; v»^here he who by strong eff'ort lifted up his head, 
and forced open the reluctant eyes, never failed to see all 
around him fast asleep. Lettuces, cowslip wine, poppy sirup, 
mandragora, hop pillows, spiders' web pills, and the whole 
tribe of narcotics, up to bang and the black drop, would have 
failed: but this was irresistible ; and thus twenty years after 
date I found benefit from having attended the course. 



CHAPTER V. A. I. 



something concerning the philosophy of dreams, and tue 
author's experience in aerial horsemanship. 

If a dream should come in now to make you afeard, 
With a windmill on liis head and bells at his beard, 
Would j'ou straight wear your spectacles here at your toes, 
And your boots on your brows and your spurs on your nose ? 

Bex Jon son. 

The wise ancients held that dreams are from Jove. Virgil 
hath told us from what gate of the infernal regions they go 
out, but at which of the five entrances of the town of Man- 
soul they get in, John Bunyan hath not explained. Some 
have conceited that unimbodied spirits have access to ns 
during sleep, and impress upon the passive faculty, by divine 
permission, presentiments of those things whereof it is fitting 
that we should be thus dimly forewarned. This opinion is 



THE DOCTOR. 25 

held by Baxter, and to this also doth Bishop Newton incline. 
The old atomists supposed that the likenesses or spectres of 
corporeal things, (exuvice scilicet rerum, vel effluvia^ as they are 
called by Vaninus, wtien he takes advantage of them to 
explain the Fata Morgana,) the atomists, I say, supposed that 
these spectral forms which are constantly emitted from all 
bodies, 

Omne genus quoniam passim simulacra feruntur* 

assail the soul when she ought to be at rest ; according to 
which theory, all the lathered faces that are created every 
morning m the looking-glass, and all the smihng ones that 
my Lor.l Simper and Mr. Smallwit contemplate there with 
so much satisfaction during the day, must at this moment be 
floating up and down the world. Others again opine, as if in 
contradiction to those who pretend Ufe to be a dream, that 
dreams are realities, and that sleep sets the soul free like a 
bird from the cage. John Henderson saw the spirit of a 
slumbering cat pass from her in pursuit of a visionary mouse ; 
(1 know not whether he would have admitted the fact as an 
argument for materialism ;) and the soul of Hans Eng^lbrecht 
not only went to hell, but brought back from it a stench which 
proved to all the bystanders that it had been there. Faugh ! 
Whether then my spirit that night found its way out at the 
nose, (for I sleep with my mouth shut,) and actually sallied 
out seeking adventures ; or whether the spectrum of the 
horse floated into my chamber; or some benevolent genius 
or demon assumed the well-known and welcome form ; oi 
whether the dream were merely a dream — 

si file en espiritu, 6 fue 
en cuerpo, no se ; que yo 
solo se, que no lo se ;* 

so, however, it was that in the visions of the night I mounted 
Nobs. Tell me not of Astolfo's hippogriff, or Pacolet's 
wooden steed, nor 

Of that wondrous horse of brass 
Whereon the Tartar king did pass ; 

nor of Alborak, who was the best beast for a night journey 
that ever man bestrode. Tell me not even of Pegasus ! I have 
ridden him many a time ; by day and by night have I ridden 
him ; high and low, far and wide, round the earth, and about 
it, and over it, and under it. I know all his earth paces and 
his sky paces. I have tried him at a walk, at an amble, at a 
trot, at a canter, at a hand gallop, at full gallop, and at full 
speed. I have proved him in the manege with single turns 
and the manege with double turns, his bounds, his curvets, 

* Lucretius. t Calderon. 



26 THE DOCTOR. 

his pirouettes, and his pistes, his croupade and his balotade, 
his gallop galliard and his capriole. I have been on him 
when he has glided through the sky with wings outstretched 
and motionless, like a kite or a summer cloud ; I have bestrode 
him when he went up like a bittern, with a strong spiral 
flight, round, round and round, and upward, upward, upv;ard, 
circling and rising still ; and again when he has gone full sail 
or full fly, with his tail as straight as a comet's behind him. 
But for a hobby or a night horse, Pegasus is nothing to Nobs. 
Where did we go on that memorable night ? What did we 
see ] What did we do % Or rather what did we not see '. 
and what did we not perform I 



CHAPTER IV. A. I. 



A CONVERSATION AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE. 

Tel condamne mon Coq-a-l'ane qui un jour en justifiera le bon sens. 

La Pretieuse. 

I WENT down to breakfast as usual overflowing with joy- 
ous thoughts. For mirth and for music the skylark is but a 
type of me. I warbled a few wood notes wild, and then full 
of the unborn work, addressed myself to my wife's eldest sis- 
ter, and asked if she would permit me to dedicate the book 
to her. " W^hat book ?" she replied. " The History," said I, 
" of Dr. Daniel Dove of Doncaster, and his horse Nobs." 
She answered, " No, indeed ! I will have no such nonsense 
dedicated to me !" and with that she drew up her upper lip, 
and the lower region of the nose. I turned to my wife's 
youngest sister : " Shall I have the pleasure of dedicating it 
to you ?" She raised her eyes, inclined her head forward 
with a smile of negation, and begged leave to decline the hon- 
our. " Commandante," said I, to my wife and commandress, 
" shall I dedicate it then to you V My commandante made 
answer, " Not unless you have something better to dedicate." 

" So, ladies I" said I, " the stone which the builders re- 
jected" — and then looking at my wife's youngest sister — 
" Oh, it will be such a book !" The manner and the tone were 
so much in earnest that they arrested the bread and butter on 
the way to her mouth ; and she exclaimed, with her eyes full 
of wonder and incredulity at the same time, "Why you 
never can be serious V " Not serious," said I ; " why I have 
done nothing but think of it and dream of it the whole night." 
" He told me so," rejoined my commandante, " the first thing 
in the morning." " Ah, Stupey !" cried my wife's eldest sister, 



THE DOCTOR. 27 

accompanying the compliment with a protrusion of the head, 
and an extension of the lips, which disclosed not only the 
whole remaining row of teeth, but the chasms that had been 
made in it by the tooth drawer ; hiatus valde lacrymabiles. 

" Two volumes," said I, " and this in the title page !" So, 
taking out my pencil, I drew upon the back of a letter the 
mysterious monogram, erudite in its appearance as the di- 
gamma of Mr. A. F. Valpy. 




It passed from hand to hand. " Why he is not in earnest ?" 
said my wife's youngest sister. " He never can be," replied 
my wife. And yet beginning to think that peradventure I 
was, she looked at me with a quick turn of the eye — " A 
pretty subject, indeed, for you to employ your time upon ! 
You — vema whefiaha yohu almad otenha twandri athancod .'" I 
have thought proper to translate this part of my command- 
ante's speech into the Garamna tongue. 



CHAPTER HI. A. I. 

THE UTILITY OF POCKETS A COMPLIMENT PROPERLY RECEIVED. 

La tasca e propria cosa da Christian!. 

Benedetto Varchi. 

My eldest daughter had finished her Latin lessons, and my 
son had finished his Greek ; and I was sitting at my desk, pen 
in hand, and in mouth at the same time ; (a substitute for 
biting the nails which I recommend to all onygophagists ;) 
when the Bhow Begum came in with her black velvet reti- 
cule, suspended as usual from her arm by its silver chain. 

Now of all the inventions of the tailor, (who is of all artists 
the most inventive,) I hold the pocket to be the most commo- 
dious, and saving the fig leaf, the most indispensable. Birds 
have their craw ; ruminating beasts their first or ante-stom- 



28 THE DOCTOR. 

ach ; the monkey has his cheek, the opossum her pouch j 
and, so necessary is some convenience of this kind for the 
human animal, that the savage who cares not for clothing 
makes for himself a pocket if he can. The Hindoo carries 
his snuffbox in his turban. Some of the inhabitants of 
Congo make a secret fob in their woolly toupee, of which, as 
P. Labat says, the worst use they make is — to cany poison 
in it. The Matolas, a long-haired race who border upon the 
Caffres, form their locks into a sort of hollow cylinder, in which 
they bear about their little implements ; certes a more sensible 
bag than such as is worn at court. The New Zealander is 
less ingenious ; he makes a large opening in his ear and car- 
ries his knife in it. The Ogres, who are worse than savages, 
and whose ignorance and brutality are in proportion to their 
bulk, are said, upon the authority of tradition, when they 
have picked up a stray traveller or two more than they re- 
quire for their supper, to lodge them in a hollow tooth as a 
place of security till breakfast ; whence it may be inferred 
that they are not liable to toothache, and that they make no 
use of toothpicks. Ogres, savages, beasts, and birds all re- 
quire something to serve the purpose of a pocket. Thus 
much for the necessity of the thing. Touching its antiquity 
much might be said ; for it would not be difficult to show, w^ith 
that little assistance from the auxiliaries must, and have, and 
been, which enabled Whitaker of Manchester to write whole 
quartoes of hypothetical history in the potential mood, that 
pockets are coeval with clothing : and, as erudite men have 
maintained that language and even letters are of divine ori- 
gin, there might with like reason be a conclusion drawn from 
the twenty-first verse of the third chapter of the book of 
Genesis, which it would not be easy to impugn. Moreover, 
nature herself shows us the utility, the importance, nay, the 
indispensability, or, to take a hint from the pure language of 
our diplomatists, the sinequanonniness of pockets. There is 
but one organ which is common to all animals whatsoever : 
some are without eyes, many without noses ; some have no 
heads, others no tails ; some neither one nor the other ; some 
there are who have no brains, others very pappy ones ; some 
no hearts, others very bad ones ; but all have a stomach — 
and what is the stomach but a live inside pocket ? Hath not 
Van Helmont said of it, " Saccus velpera est, ut ciborum olla V 
Dr. Towers used to have his coat pockets made of capa- 
city to hold a quarto volume — a wise custom ; but requiring 
stout cloth, good buckram, and strong thread well waxed. I 
do not so greatly commend the humour of Dr. Ingenhouz, 
whose coat was lined with pockets of all sizes, wherein, in 
his latter years, when science had become to him as a play- 
thing, he carried about various materials for chymical experi- 
ments : among the rest so many compositions for fulminating 
powders in glass tubes, separated only by a cork in the 



THE I>OCTOR. 29 

middle of the tube, that, if any person had unhappily given him 
a blow with a stick, he might have blown up himself and the 
doctor too. For myself^ four coat pockets of the ordinary 
dimensions content me ; in these a sufficiency of conveniences 
may be carried, and that sufficiency methodically arranged. 
For mark me, gentle or ungentle reader ! there is nothing 
like method in pockets, as well as in composition : and what 
orderly and methodical man would have his pocket handker- 
chief, and his pocketbook, and the. key of his door, (if he be 
a bachelor living in chambers,) and his knife, and his loose 
pence and halfpence, and the letters which peradventure he 
might just have received, or peradventure he may intend to 
drop in the postoffice, twopenny or general, as he passes 
by, and his snuff, if he be accustomed so to regale his olfac- 
tory conduits, or his tobacco-box, if he prefer the masticable 
to the pulverized weed ; or his box of lozenges, if he should 
be troubled with a tickling cough ; and the sugar plums 
and the gingerbread nuts which he may be carrying home to 
his own children, or to any other small men and women upon 
whose hearts he may have a design ; who, I say, would like 
to have all this in chaos and confusion, one lying upon the 
other, and the thing which is wanted first fated always to be 
undermost! — (Mr. Wilberforce knows the inconvenience:) — 
the snuff working its way out to the gingerbread, the sugar 
plums insinuating themselves into the folds of the pocket 
handkerchief, the pence grinding the lozenges to dust for the 
benefit of the pocketbook, and the door key busily employed 
in unlocking the letters 1 

Now, forasmuch as the commutation of female pockets 
for the reticule leadeth to inconveniences like this, (not to 
mention that the very name of commutation ought to be held 
in abhorrence by all who hold daylight and fresh air essen- 
tial to the comfort and salubrity of dwellinghouses,) I abom- 
inate that bag of the Bhovi? Begum, notwithstanding the 
beauty of the silver chain upon the black velvet. And per- 
ceiving at this time that the clasp of its silver setting was 
broken, so that the mouth of the bag was gaping pitiably, like 
a sick or defunct oyster, I congratulated her as she came in 
upon this further proof of the commodiousness of the inven- 
tion ; for here, in the country, there is no workman who can 
mend that clasp, and the bag nmst therefore either be laid 
aside, or used in that deplorable state. 

When the Bhow Begum had seated herself I told her how 
my proffered dedication had been thrice rejected with scorn, 
and repeating the offer 1 looked for a more gracious reply. 
But, as if scorn had been the influenza of the female mind 
that morning, she answered, " No ; indeed she would not 
have it after it had been refused by everybody else." " Nay, 
nay," said I ; ''it is as much in your character to accept, as 
it was in their's to refuse." While I was speaking she took 



30 THE DOCTOR. 

a pinch of snuff; the nasal titillation co-operated with my 
speech, for when any one of the senses is pleased, the rest 
are not likely to continue out of humour. " Well," she re- 
plied, " I will have it dedicated to me, because [ shall delight 
in the book." And she powdered the carpet with tobacco 
dust as she spake. 



CHAPTER II. A. I. 

CONCERNING DEDICATIONS, PRINTERS' TYPES, AND IMPERIAL INK. 

II y aura des clefs, et des ouvertures de mes secrets. 

La Pretieuse. 

Monsieur Dellon, having been in the inquisition at Goa, 
dedicated an account of that tribunal, and of his own sufferings, 
to Mademoiselle Du Cambout de Coislin, in these words • — 

Mademoiselle, 
J'aurois tort de me plaindre des rigueurs de Pinquisition, 
et des mauvais traitemens que j'ay eprouvez de la part de 
ses ministres, puisqu'en me fournissant la matiere de cet 
ouvrage, ils m'ont procure I'avantage de vous le dedier. 

This is the book which that good man Claudius Buchanan 
with so much propriety put into the hands of the grand in- 
quisitor of India, when he paid him a visit at the inquisition, 
and asked him his opinion of the accuracy of the relation 
upon the spot ! 

The Frenchman's compliment may truly be said to have 
been far-fetched and dearly bought. Heaven forefend that I 
should either go so far for one, or purchase it at such a price ! 

A dedication has oftentimes cost the unhappy author a 
greater consumption of thumb and finger nail than the whole 
book besides, and all varieties of matter and manner have 
been resorted to. Mine must be so far in character with the 
delectable history which it introduces that it shall be unlike 
all which have ever gone before it. I knew a man (one he 
was who would have been an ornament to his country if 
methodism and madness had not combined to overthrow a 
bright and creative intellect) who, in one of hisinsaner moods, 
printed a sheet and a half of muddy rhapsodies with the title 
of the " Standard of God displayed :" and he prefaced it by 
saying that the price of a perfect book, upon a perfect sub- 
ject, ought to be a perfect sum in a perfect coin ; that is to 
say one guinea. Now, as Dr. Daniel Dove was a perfect 



THE DOCTOR. 31 

doctor, and his horse Nobs was a perfect horse, and as I 
humbly hope their history will be a perfect history, so ought 
the dedication thereunto to be perfect in its kind. Perfect 
therefore it shall be, as far as kalo-typography can make it. 
For though it would be hopeless to exceed all former dedica- 
lions in the turn of a compliment or of a sentence, in the 
turn of the letters it is possible to exceed them all. It was 
once my fortune to employ a printer who had a love for his 
art ; and having a taste that way myself, we discussed the 
merits of a new font one day when I happened to call in upon 
him. I objected to the angular inclination of a capital italic 
A, which stood upon its pins as if it were starting aghast from 
the next letter on the left, and was about to tumble upon 
that to the right ; in which case down would go the rest of 
the word, like a row of soldiers which children make with 
cards. My printer was too deeply enamoured with the 
beauties of his font to have either ear or eye for its defects ; 
and hastily waiving that point he called my attention to a 
capital R in the same line, which cocked up its tail just as 
if it had been nicked ; that cock of the tail had fascinated 
him. " Look, sir," said he, while his eyes glistened with all 
the ardour of an amateur ; " look at that turn ! — that's sweet, 
sir !" and drawing off the hand with the fore finger of which 
he had indicated it, he described in the air the turn that had 
delighted him, in a sort of heroic flourish, his head with a 
diminished axis, like the inner stile of a pentagraph, follow- 
ing the movement. I have never seen that R since without 

***** ******* ** ******* *** ********* ***** *** *** ** 
«## **##**# ***** ** ********** *** *** ******* jjg who 
can read the stars, may read in them the secret which he 
seeketh. 

But the turns of my dedication to the Bhow Begum shall 
not be trusted to the letter founders, a set of men remark- 
able for involving their craft in such mystery that no one 
ever taught it to another, every one who has practised it 
having been obliged either surreptitiously to obtain the secret, 
or to invent a method for himself. It shall be in the old Eng- 
lish letter, not only because that alphabet hath in its curves 
and angles, its frettings and redundant lines, a sort of pictur- 
esque similitude with Gothic architecture, but also because 
in its breadth and beauty it will display the colour of the ink 
to most advantage. For the dedication shall not be printed 
in black after the ordinary fashion, nor in white like the 
sermon upon the excise laws, nor in red after the mode of 
Mr. Dibdin's half titles, but in the colour of that imperial 
encaustic ink, which by the laws of the Roman empire it was 
death for any but the Roman emperor himself to use. We 
Britons live in a free country, wherein every man may use 
what coloured ink seemeth good to him, and put as much 



32 THE DOCTOR. 

gall in it as he pleases, or any other ingredient whatsoever.* 
Moreover, this is an imperial age, in which, to say nothing of 
M. Ingelby, the Emperor of the Conjurers, we have seen no 
fewer than four new emperors. Him of Russia, who did not 
think the old title of Peter the Great good enough for him ; 
him of France, for whom any name but that of tyrant or 
murderer is too good ; him of Austria, who took up one im- 
perial appellation to cover over the humiliating manner in 
which he laid another down ; and him of Hayti, who if he 
be wise will order all public business to be carried on in the 
talkee-talkee tongue, and make it high treason for any person 
to speak or write French in his dominions. We also must 
dub our old parliament imperial forsooth ! that we may not 
be -behindhand with the age. Then we have imperial dining 
tables ! imperial oil for nourishing the hair ! imperial liquid 
for boot tops ! Yea, and by all the Caesars deified and dam- 
nified, imperial blacking ! For my part I love to go with the 
stream, so I will have an imperial dedication. 
Behold it, reader. Therein is mystery. 

* In the English copy this dedication is printed, not with black ink, but 
with some pigment of a hue unknown in the printing office of the Ameri- 
can publishers, and not to be imitated without some expense and more 
trouble and loss of time. They have, therefore, adventured to substitute 
for it plain honest sable, at the hazard even of spoiling the author's mys- 
terious mystery. 



Co 



THE DOCTOR. 35 



CHAPTER I. A. I. 

wo BOOK CAN BE COMPLETE WITHOUT A PREFACE. 

1 see no cause but men may pick their teeth 
Though Brutus with a sword did kill himself. 

Taylor, the Water Poet. 

Who was the inventor of prefaces 1 I shall be obliged to 
the immortal Mr. Urban, (immortal, because like the king in 
law he never dies,) if he will propound this question for me 
in his magazine, that great lumber-room wherein small ware 
of all kinds has been laid up higgledy-piggledy by halfpenny- 
worths or farthing-worths at a Time for fourscore years, till, 
like broken glass, rags, or rubbish, it has acquired value by 
mere accumulation. To send a book like this into the world 
without a preface, would be as impossible as it is to appear 
at court without a bag at the head and a sword at the tail ; 
for as the perfection of dress must be shown at court, so in 
this history should the perfection of histories be exhibited. 
The book must be omni genere absolutum: it must prove and 
exemplify the perfectibility of books : yea, with all imagin- 
able respect for the " Delicate Investigation," which 1 leave 
in undisputed possession of an appellation so exquisitely 
appropriate, I conceive that the title of the book, as a popu- 
lar designation xar' e^oxnv, should be transferred from the edi- 
fying report of that inquiry to the present unique, unrivalled, 
and unrivalable production ; a production, the like whereof 
hath not been, is not, and will not be. Here, however, let 
me warn my Greek and Arabian translators how they render 
the word, that if they offend the mufti or the patriarch, the 
offence as well as the danger may be theirs: I wash my 
hands of both. I write in plain English, innocently, and in 
the simplicity of my heart : what may be made of it in hea- 
then languages concerns not me. 



ANTE-PREFACE. 



i' k AS pvet flut ihee with a hive of bees, laden some with wax, and some 
^mth honey. Fear not to approach ! There are no wasps, there are no 
hornets here. If some wanton bee should chance to buzz about thine 
ears, stand thy ground and hold thy hands ; there's none will sting thee if 
thou strike not tirst. If any do, she hath honey in her bagjj/ill cure thee 

too. — QUARLES. 

Prefaces, said Charles Blount, Gent., who committed 
suicide because the law would not allow him to marry his 
brother's widow — a law, be it remarked in passing, which 
is not sanctioned by reason, and which, instead of being in 
conformity with Scripture, is in direct opposition to it, being 
in fact the mere device of a corrupt and greedy church — 
"prefaces," said this flippant, ill-opinioned, and unhappy 
man, " ever were, and still are but of two sorts, let other 
modes and fashions vary as they please. Let the profane 
long peruke succeed the godly cropped hair ; the cravat, the 
ruff" ; presbytery, popery ; and popery presbytery again, yet 
still the author keeps to his old and wonted method of prefac- 
ing ; when at the beginning of his book he enters, either with 
a halter about his neck, submitting himself to his reader's 
mercy whether he shall be hanged, or no ; or else in a huffing 
manner he appears with the halter in his hand, and threatens 
to hang his reader, if he gives him not his good word. This, 
with the excitement of some friends to his undertaking, and 
some few apologies for want of time, books, and the like, 
are the constant and usual shams of all scribblers as well 
ancient as modern." This was not true then, nor is it now; 
but when he proceeds to say, " For my part I enter the lists 
upon another score," so say I with him ; and my preface 
shall say the rest. 



PREFACE. 



Oh for a quill plucked from a seraph's wing ! — Young. 

So the poet exclaimed ; and his exclamation may be 
quoted as one example more of the vanity of human wishes; 
for in order to get a seraph's quill it would be necessary, 
according to Mrs. Glasse's excellent item in her directions 
for roasting a hare, to begin by catching a seraph. A quill 
from a seraph's wing is, I confess, above ray ambition ; but 
one from a peacock's tail was within my reach ; and be it 
known unto all people, nations, and languages, that with a 
peacock's quill this preface hath been penned — literally — 
truly, and hona-fidely speaking. And this is to write, as the 
learned old Pasquier says, pavonesquement, which in Latin 
minted for the nonce may be rendered pavonice, and in Eng- 
lish peacockically, or peacockishly, whichever the reader may 
like best. That such a pen has verily and indeed been used 
upon this occasion I affirm. I affirm it upon the word of a true 
man ; and here is a captain of his majesty's navy at my elbow, 
who himself made the pen, and who, if evidence were 
required to the fact, would attest it by as round an oath as 
ever rolled over a right English tongue. Nor will the time 
easily escape his remembrance, the bells being at this mo- 
ment ringing, June 4, 1814, to celebrate the king's birthday, 
and the public notification that peace has been concluded 
with France. 

I nave oftentimes had the happiness of seeing due com- 
mendation bestowed by gentle critics, unknown admirers, 
and partial friends upon my pen, which has been married to 
all amiable epithets : classical, fine, powerful, tender, touch- 
ing, pathetic, strong, fanciful, daring, elegant, sublime, beau- 
tiful. I have read these epithets with that proper satisfac- 
tion which when thus applied they could not fail to impart, and 
sometimes qualified the pride which they inspired by looking 
at the faithful old tool of the muses beside me, worn to the 
stump in their service : the one end mended up to the quick 
in that spirit of economy which becomes a son of the Lack- 
land family, and shortened at the other by the gradual and 
alternate processes of burning and biting, till a scant inch 
only is left above the finger place. Philemon Holland waf 
but a type of me in this respect. Lide-ed I may be allowed 



40 THE DOCTOR. 

to say that I have improved upon his practice, or at least 
that I get more out of a pen than he did, for in the engraved 
title page to his Cyropaedia, where there appears the portrait 
of the mterpres marked by a great D enclosing the Greek 
letters (which I presume designates Doctor Philemon) cEtatis 
suce 80. A°. 1632, it may be plainly seen that he used his 
pen only at one end. Peradventure he delighted not, as I 
do, in the mitigated ammoniac odour. 

But thou, oh gentle reader, who in the exercise of thy 
sound judgment and natural benignity wilt praise this preface, 
thou mayst with perfect propriety bestow the richest epi- 
thets upon the pen wherewith its immortal words were first 
clothed in material forms. Beautiful, elegant, fine, splendid, 
fanciful, will be to the very letter of truth : versatile it is as 
the wildest wit ; flexible as the most monkeylike talent ; and 
shouldst thou call it tender, I will whisper in thine ear — that 
it is only too soft. Yet softness may be suitable ; for of my 
numerous readers one half will probably be soft by sex, and 
of the other half a very considerable proportion soft by 
nature. Soft, therefore, be the pen and soft the strain. 

I have drawn up the window blinds (though sunshine at 
this time acts like snuff upon the mucous membrane of my 
nose) in order that the light may fall upon this excellent 
poet's wand as 1 wave it to and fro, making cuts five and six 
of the broadsword exercise. Every feather of its fringe is 
now lit up by the sun ; the hues of green, and gold, and ame- 
thyst are all brought forth; and that predominant lustre 
which can only be likened to some rich metallic oxyde;and 
that spot of deepest purple, the pupil of an eye foV whose 
glorious hue neither metals, nor flowers, nor precious stones 
afford a resemblance : its likeness is only to be found in ani- 
mated life, in birds and insects whom nature seems to have 
formed when she was most prodigal of beauty : I have seen 
it indeed upon the sea, but it has been in some quiet bay, 
when the reflection of the land combined v/ith the sky and 
the ocean to produce it. 

And what can be more emblematical of the work which I 
am beginning than the splendid instrument wherewith the 
preface is traced 1 What could more happily typify the com- 
bination of parts, each perfect in itself when separately con- 
sidered, yet all connected into on.e harmonious whole ; the 
story running through like the stem or backbone, which the 
episodes and digressions fringe like so many featherlets, 
leading up to that catastrophe, the gem or eye-star, for which 
the whole was formed, and in which all terminate. 

They who are versed in the doctrine of sympathies and 
the arcana of correspondences, as revealed to the Swedish 
Emanuel, will doubtless admire the instinct or inspiration 
which directed my choice to the Pavonian pen. The exam- 
ple should be followed by all consumers of ink and quill. 



THE DOCTOR. 41 

Then would the lover borrow a feather from the turtle dove. 
The lawyer would have a large assortment of kite, hawk, 
buzzard, and vulture : his clients may use pigeon or gull 

Poets according to their varieties. Mr. , the tomtit. 

Mr. , the water wagtail. Mr. , the crow. Mr. , 

the mocking bird. Mr. -^ , the magpie. Mr. , the 

skylark. Mr. , the eagle. Mr. , the swan. Lord 

, the black swan. Critics, some the owl, others the 

butcher bird. Your challenger must endite with one from 
the wing of a game cock : he who takes advantage of a privi- 
leged situation to offer the wrong and shrink from the atone- 
ment, will find a white feather. Your dealers in public and 
private scandal, whether Jacobins or anti-jacobins, the pimps 
and panders of a profligate press, should use none but duck 
feathers, and those of the dirtiest that can be found in the 
purlieus of PimUco or St. George's Fields. But for the 
editor of the Edinburgh Review, whether he dictates in morals 
or in taste, or displays his peculiar talent in political proph- 
ecy, he must continue to use goose quills. Stick to the 
goose, Mr. Jeffrey ; while you live stick to the goose I 



INITIAL CHAPTER. 

'E^ bv 6tI to, rrpSiTa. — HoMER. 



They who remember the year 1800 will remember also the 
great controversy whether it was the beginning of a century 
or the end of one ; a controversy in which all magazines, all 
nev/spapers, and all persons took part. Now, as it has been 
deemed expedient to divide this work, or to speak more em- 
phatically this opus, or more emphatically still, this ergon, 
into chapters ante-initial and post-initial, a dispute of the 
same nature might arise among the commentators in after 
ages, if especial care were not now taken to mark distinctly 
the beginning. This, therefore, is the initial chapter, neither 
ante nor post, but standing between both ; the point of initia- 
tion — the goal of the antes, the starting-place of the posts ; 
the mark at which the former end their career, and from 
whence the latter take their departure. 
3 



THE DOCTOR, 



Eccoti il libro ; mettivi ben cura 
Iddio t' ajuti e dia buona ventura. 

Orl. Innam- 



CHAPTER I. P. I. 

THE SUBJECT OF THIS HISTORY AT HOME AND AT TEA. 

If thou be a severe sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee 
to be a competent judge. — Izaak Walton. 

The clock of St. George's had struck five. Mrs. Dove had 
just poured out the doctor's seventh cup of tea. The doctor 
was sitting in his armchair. Sir Thomas was purring upon 
his knees ; and Pompey stood looking up to his mistress, 
wagging his tail, sometimes whining Avith a short note of im- 
patience, and sometimes gently putting his paw against her 
apron to remind her that he wished for another bit of bread 
and butter. Barnaby was gone to the farm, and Nobs was in 
tlie stable. 



46 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTEU 11. P. 1. 

WHEREIN CERTAIN QUESTIONS A.RE PROPOSED CONCERNING TIM8, 
PLACE, AND PERSONS. 

Quis? quid? ubi? quibusauxiliis? cur? quomodo? quando? 

Technical Verse, 

Thus have I begun according to the most approved forms , 
not like those who begin the Trojan war from Leda's egg, or 
the histoiy of Great Britain from Adam, or the Ufe of Gen- 
eral Washington from the discovery of the New World ; but 
in conformity to the Horatian precept, rushing into the 
middle of things. Yet the giant Moulineau's appeal to his 
friend the story-telling ram may well be remembered here : 
Belier mon ami, si tu voulois commencer par le commencement 
tu me ferois grand plaisir. For in the few lines of the pre- 
ceding chapter how much is there that requires explanation ! 
Who was Nobs ■? Who was Barnaby? Who was the doc- 
tor 1 Who was Mrs. Dove 1 The place, where 1 The timet 
when ? The persons, who 1 

" I male not tell you all at once ; 
But as I male and can, I shall 
By order tellen you it all," 

So saith Chaucer; and in the same mind, Jacilins discimus 
qua congruo dicuntur ordine quam, quce sparsim et confusimt 
saith Erasmus. Think a moment, I beseech thee, reader 
what order is ! Not the mere word which is so often vocif 
erated in the House of Commons, or uttered by the speake^r 
ore rotundo, when it is necessary for him to assume the tone 
of Zsiii vxpippeiiirns ; but Order in its essence and truth, in itself 
and in its derivatives. 

Waiving the orders in council, and the order of the day, a 
phrase so familiar in the disorderly days of the French Na- 
tional Convention, think, gentle reader, of the order of knight- 
hood, of holy orders, of the orders of architecture, the Lin- 
naean orders, the orderly sergeant, the ordinal numbers, the 
ordinary of Newgate, the ordinary on Sundays at two o'clock 
in the environs of the metropolis, the ordinary faces of those 
who partake of what is ordinarily provided for them there, 
and under the auspices of government itself, and par excel- 
lence the Extraordinary Gazette. And as the value of healtk 
is never truly and feelingly understood except in sicknes«, 



THE DOCTOR. 47 

contemplate for a moment what the want of order is. Think 
of disorder in things remote, and then as it approaches thee. 
In the country wherein thou livest, bad ; in the town whereof 
thou art an inhabitant, worse; in thine own street, worser; 
in thine own house, worst of all. Think of it in thy family, 
in thy fortune, in thine intjgstines. In thy affairs, distress- 
ing; in thy members, painful; in thy conduct, ruinous. 
Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the 
peace of the city, the security of the state. As the beams 
to a house, as the bones to the microcosm of man, so is 
order to all things. Abstract it from a dictionary, and thou 
mayst imagine the inextricable confusion which would 
ensue. Reject it from the alphabet, and Zerah Colburne 
himself could not go through the christcross-row. How then 
should I do without it in this history 1 

A Quaker by name Benjamin Lay (who was a little cracked 
in the head though sound at heart) took one of his composi- 
tions once to Benjamin Franklin that it might be printed and 
published. Frankhn, having looked over the manuscript, ob- 
served that it was deficient in arrangement. " It is no mat- 
ter," replied the author, " print any part thou pleasest first." 
Many are the speeches, and the sermons, and the treatises, 
and the poems, and the volumes which are like Benjamin 
Lay's book ; the head might serve for the tail, and the tail 
for the body, and the body for the head — either end for the 
middle, and the middle for either end — nay, if you could turn 
them inside out like a polypus, or a glove, they would be no 
worse for the operation. 

When the excellent Hooker was on his deathbed, he 
expressed his joy at the prospect of entering a world of 
order. 



CHAPTER HI. P. L 

WHOLESOME OBSERVATIONS UPON THE VANITY OF FAME. 

Whosoever shall address himself to write of matters of instruction, or of 
any other argument of importance, it behooveth that before he enter there- 
into, he should resolutely determine with himself in what order he will 
handle the same ; so shall he best accomplish that he hath undertaken, 
and inform the understanding, and help the memory of the reader. — Gwil 
LIm's Display of Heraldry. 

Who was the doctor? 

We will begin with the persons for sundry reasons, general 
and specific. Doth not the Latin grammar teach us so to 
do, wherein the personal verbs come before the impersonal. 



48 THE DOCTOR. 

and the propria quce marihus precede all other nouns % 
Moreover, by replying to this question, all needful explana- 
tion as to time and place will naturally and of necessity 
follow in due sequence. 

Truly I will deliver and discourse 
The sum of all.* 

Who was the doctor 1 

Can it, then, be necessary to ask 1 Alas, the vanity of 
human fame ! Vanity of vanities, all is vanity ! " How 
few," says Bishop Jeremy Taylor, " have heard of the name 
of Veneatapadino Ragium ! He imagined that there was no 
man in the world that knew him not: how many men can 
tell me that he was the king of Narsinga T' When I men- 
tion Arba, who but the practised textualist can call to mind 
that he was " a great man among the Anakim," that he was 
the father of Anak, and that from him Kirjath-Arba took its 
name ? A great man among the giants of the earth, the 
founder of a city, the father of Anak! — and now there re- 
maineth nothing more of him or his race than the bare men- 
tion of them in one of the verses of one of the chapters of 
the Book of Joshua : except for that only record it would not 
now be known that Arba had ever lived, or that Hebron was 
originally called after his name. Vanitas Vanitatum ! Omnia 
Vanitas. An old woman in a village in the west of England 
was told one day that the King of Prussia was dead, such a 
report having arrived when the great Frederick was in the 
noonday of his glory. Old Mary lifted up her great slow 
eyes at the news, and fixing them in the fulness of vacancy 
upon her informant, replied, " Is a ! is a ! The Lord ha' 
mercy! Well, well! The King of Prussia! And who's 
he V The " who's he ?" of this old woman might serve as 
text for a notable sermon upon ambition. " Who's he ?" 
may now be asked of men greater as soldiers in their day 
than Frederick or Wellington ; greater as discoverers than 
Sir Isaac or Sir Humphrey. Who built the pyramids T Who 
ate the first oyster ? Vanitas Vanitatum ! Omnia Vanitas 

Why then doth flesh, a bubble-glass of breath, 
Hunt after honour and advancement vain, 

And rear a trophy for devouring death, 
With so great labour and long-lasting pain, 
As if his days for ever should remain ? 

Sith all that in this world is great or gay. 

Doth as a vapour vanish and decay. 

Look back who list unto the former ages. 
And call to count what is of them become ; 

Where be those learned wits and antique sages 
Which of all wisdom knew the perfect sum ? 

* G. Peela 



THE DOCTOR. 49 

Where those great warriors which did overcome 
The world with conquest of their might and main, 
And made one mear of the earth, and of their reign ?* 

Who was the doctor ? 

Oh that thou hadst known him, reader ! Then should I 
have answered the question~-if orally, by an emphasis upon 
the article — the doctor; or if in written words, THE DOC- 
TOR — thus giving the word that capital designation to which, 
as the head of his profession within his own orbit, he was so 
justly entitled. But I am not writing to those only who 
knew him, nor merely to the inhabitants of the West Riding, 
nor to the present generation alone. No ! to all Yorkshire — 
all England; all the British empire ; all the countries wherein 
the English tongue is, or shall be, spoken or understood : yea, 
to all places, and all times to come. Fara todos, 3.^ saith the 
famous Doctor Juan Perez de Montalvan Natural de Madrid, 
which is, being interpreted, a Spanish cockney — para iodos ; 
porque es un aparato de varias materias, donde el Filosqfo, el 
Cortesano, el Humanista, el Poeta, el Predicador, el Teologo, 
el Soldado, el Devoio, el Jurisconsulto, el Matematico, el Medico, 
el Soltero, el Casado, el Religioso, el Ministro, el Pleheyo, el 
Senor, el OJicial, y el Entretenido, hxillaranjuntamenie utilidad 
y gusto, erudicion y divertimiento, doctrina y desahogo, recreoy 
ensenanza, moralidad y alivio, ciencia y descanso, provecho y 
passaiiempo, alahanzas y reprehensiones, y ultimamente exem- 
plos y donaires, que sin ofender las costumbres delecten el animo, 
y sazonen el entendimiento. 

Who was the doctor 1 

The doctor was Doctor Daniel Dove. 

* Spenser. 



50 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER IV. P. I. 

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE OF DR. DOVE, WITH THE DESCRIPTION OF A 
yeoman's house in the west RIDING OF YORKSHIRE A HUN- 
DRED YEARS AGO. 

Non possidentem multa A'ocaveris 
Recte beatum ; rectius occupat 
Nomen beati, qui Deoruin 
Muneribus sapienter uti, 
Duramque callet pauperiem pati, 
Pejusque ietho flagitium timet. 

Horace, 1. 4, ode 9. 

Daniel, the son of Daniel Dove and of Dinah his wife, 
was born near Ingleton in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on 
Monday, the twenty-second of April, old style, 1723, nine 
minutes and three seconds after three in the afternoon ; on 
which day Marriage came in and Mercury was with the 
Moon; and the aspects were □ ^ $ : a week earlier, it would 
have been a most glorious trine of the Sun and Jupiter; 
circumstances which were all duly noted in the blank leaf of 
the family Bible. 

Daniel, the father, was one of the race of men who un- 
happily are now almost extinct. He lived upon an estate of 
six-and-twenty acres which his fathers had possessed before 
him, all Doves and Daniels, in uninterrupted succession 
from time immemorial, farther than registers or title deeds 
could ascend. The little church called Chapel le Dale stands 
about a bow shot from the family house. There they had all 
been carried to the font ; there they had each led his bride 
to the altar; and thither they had, each in his turn, been 
borne upon the shoulders of their friends and neighbours. 
Earth to earth they had been consigned there for so many 
generations, that half of the soil of the churchyard consisted 
of their remains. A hermit who might wish his grave to 
be as quiet as his cell, could imagine no fitter resting-place. 
On three sides there was an irregular low stone wall, rather 
to mark the limits of the sacred ground, than to enclose it; 
on the fourth it was bounded by the brook whose waters 
proceed by a subterraneous channel from Wethercote cave. 
Two or three alders and rowan trees hung over the brook, 
and shed their leaves and seeds into the stream. Some 
bushy hazels grew at intervals along the lines of the wall ; 
and a few ash trees, as the winds had sown them. To the 
east and west some fields adjoined it, in that state of half 



THE DOCTOR. 51 

cultivation which gives a human character to sohtude : to 
the south, on the other side, the brook, the common with its 
limestone rocks peering everywhere above ground, extended 
to the foot of Ingleborough. A craggy hill, feathered with 
birch, sheltered it from the north. 

The turf was as fine and soft as that of the adjoining 
hills ; it was seldom broken, so scanty was the population 
to which it was appropriated ; scarcely a thistle or a nettle 
deformed it, and the few tombstones which had been placed 
there were now themselves half buried. The sheep came 
over the wall when they listed, and sometimes took shelter 
in the porch from the storm. Their voices, and the cry of 
the kite wheeling above, were the only sounds which were 
heard there, except when the single bell which hung in its 
niche over the entrance tinkled for service on the Sabbath 
day, or with a slower tongue gave notice that one of the 
children of the soil was returning to the earth from which 
he sprung. 

The house of the Doves was to the east of the churchy 
under the same hill, and with the same brook in front ; and 
the intervening fields belonged to the family. It was alow 
house, having before it a Uttle garden of that size and char- 
acter which showed that the inhabitants could afford to be- 
stow a thought upon something more than mere bodily 
wants. You entered between two yew trees clipped to the 
fashion of two pawns. There were hollyhocks and sunflowers 
displaying themselves above the wall; roses and sweet peas 
under the windows, and the everlasting pea climbing the 
porch. Over the door was a stone with these letters. 

D 
D + M 

A.D 

1608. 

The A was in the Saxon character. The rest of the gar- 
den lay behind the house, partly on the slope of the hill. It 
had a hedge of gooseberry bushes, a few apple trees, pot 
herbs in abundance, onions, cabbages, turnips, and carrots ; 
potatoes had hardly yet found their way into these remote 
parts : and in a sheltered spot under the crag, open to the 
south, were six beehives, which made the family perfectly 
independent of West India produce. Tea was in those 
days as little known as potatoes, and for all other things 
honey supplied the place of sugar. 

The house consisted of seven rooms, the dairy and cellar 
included, which were both upon the ground floor. As you 
entered the kitchen there was on the right one of those open 
chimneys which aff'ord more comfort in a winter's evening 
than the finest register stove ; in front of the chimney stood 
a wooden beehive chair, and on each side was a long oak seat 
3* 



52 THE DOCTOR. 

with a back to it, the seats serving as chests, in which the 
oaten bread was kept. They were of the darkest brown, and 
well polished by constant use. On the back of each were 
the same initials as those over the door, with the date 1610. 
The great oak table, and the chest in the best kitchen which 
held the house linen, bore the same date. The chimney was 
well hung with bacon, the rack which covered half the ceiling 
bore equal marks of plenty ; mutton hams were suspended 
from other parts of the ceiling ; and there was an odour of 
cheese from the adjoining dairy, which the turf fire, though 
perpetual as that of the magi or of the Vestal virgins, did not 
overpower. A few pewter dishes were ranged above the 
trenchers, opposite the door on a conspicuous shelf. The 
other treasures of the family were in an open triangular cup- 
board, fixed in one of the corners of the best kitchen, half- 
way from the floor, and touching the ceiling. They con- 
sisted of a silver saucepan, a silver goblet, and four apostle 
spoons. Here also King Charles's Golden Rules were pasted 
against the wall, and a large print of Daniel in the Lion's 
Den. The lions were bedaubed with yellow, and the prophet 
was bedaubed with blue, with a red patch upon each of his 
cheeks : if he had been like his picture he might have fright- 
ened the lions; but happily there were no "judges" in the 
family, and it had been bought for its name's sake. The 
other print which ornamented the room had been purchased " 
from alike feeling, though the cause was not so immediately 
apparent. It represented a ship in full sail, wdth Joseph and 
the Virgin Mary, and the Infant on board, and a dove flying 
behind as if to fill the sails with the motion of its wings. 
Six black chairs were ranged along the wall, where they 
were seldom disturbed from their array. They had been 
purchased by Daniel the grandfather upon his marriage, and 
were the most costly purchase that had ever been made in 
the family ; for the goblet was a legacy. The backs were 
higher than the head of the tallest man when seated ; the 
seats flat and shallow, set in a round frame, unaccommo- 
dating in their material, more unaccommodating in shape ; 
the backs also were of wood rising straight np, and orna- 
mented with balls, and lozenges, and embossments ; and the 
legs and crossbars were adorned in the same taste. Over 
the chimney were two peacocks' feathers, some of the dry 
silky pods of the honesty flower, and one of those large 
" sinuous shells" so finely thus described by Landor — 

" Of pearly hue 

Within, and they that lustre have imbibed 

In the sun's palace porch ; where, when unyoked, 

His chariot wheel stands midway in the wave, 

Shake one, and it awakens ; then apply 

Its polished lips to your attentive ear, 

And it remembers its august abodes, 

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. 



THE DOCTOR. 53 

There was also a head of Indian corn there, and a back 
scratcher, of which the hand was ivory and the handle black. 
This had been a present of Daniel the grandfather to his wife. 
The three apartments above served equally for storerooms 
and bedchambers. William Dove the brother slept in one, 
and Agatha the maid, or Haggy, as she was called, in another. 



CHAPTER V. P. I. 

EXTENSION OF THE SCIENCE OF PHYSIOGNOMY, WITH SOME RE- 
MARKS UPON THE PRACTICAL USES OF CRANIOLOGY. 

Hanc ergo scientiam blande excipiamus, hilariterque amplectamur, ut 
vere nostram et de nobismet ipsis tractantem ; quam qui non amat, quam 
qui non amplectitur, nee philosophiam amat, neque suae vitae discrimina 
curat. — Baptista Porta. 

They who kno\y that the word physiognomy is not de- 
rived from phiz, and infer from that knowledge that the 
science is not confined to the visage alone, have extended 
it to handwritings also, and hence it has become fashionable 
in this age of collectors to collect the autographs of remark- 
able persons. But now that Mr. Rapier has arisen, " the 
reformer of illegible hands," he and his rival Mr. Carstairs 
teach all their pupils to write alike. The countenance, how- 
ever, has fairer play in our days than it had in old times, for 
the long heads of the sixteenth century were made by the 
nurses, not by nature. Elongating the nose, flattening the 
temples, and raising the forehead are no longer performed by 
manual force, and the face undergoes now no other artificial 
modelling than such as may be impressed upon it by the aid 
of the looking-glass. So far physiognomy becomes less diffi- 
cult, the data upon which it has to proceed not having been 
fahi^ed ab initio ; but there arises a question in what state 
ought they to be examined 1 Dr. Gall is for shaving the head, 
and overhauling it as a Turk does a Circassian upon sale, 
that he may discover upon the outside of the scull the organs 
of fighting, murder, cunning, and thieving, (near neighbours in 
his mappa cerebri,) of comparing colours, of music, of sexual 
instinct, of philosophical judgment &c., &c. ; all which, with 
all other qualities, have their latitudes and longitudes in the 
brain, and are conspicuous upon the outward scull, according 
to the degree in which they influence the character of the 
individual. 

It must be admitted that if this learned German's theory 
of craniology be well founded, the gods have devised a much 
surer, safer, and more convenient means for discovering the 



54 THE DOCTOR. 

real characters of the lords and ladies of the creation, than 
what Momus proposed, when he advised that a window 
should be placed in the breast. For if his advice had been 
followed, and there had actually been a window in the sternum, 
it is I think beyond all doubt that a window shutter would soon 
have been found indispensably necessary in cold climates, 
more especially in England, where pulmonary complaints are 
so frequent ; and, secondly, the wind would not be more in- 
jurious to the lungs in high latitudes, than the sun would be 
to the liver in torrid regions ; indeed, everywhere during 
summer it would be impossible to exist without a green 
curtain, or Venetian blinds to the window ; and after all, take 
what precautions we might, the world would be ten times 
more bilious than it is. Another great physical inconve- 
nience would also have arisen ; for if men could peep 
into their insides at any time, and see the motions and the 
fermentations which are continually going on, and the rise 
and progress of every malady distinctly marked in the 
changes it produced, so many nervous diseases would be 
brought on by frequent inspection, and so many derange- 
ments from attempting to regulate the machine, that the only 
way to prevent it from making a full stop would be to put a 
lock upon the shutter, and deliver the key to the physician. 

But upon Dr. Gall's theory how many and what obvious 
advantages result! Nor are they merely confined to the 
purpose of speculative physiognomy ; the uses of his theory 
as applied to practice offer to us hopes scarcely less delight- 
ful than those which seemed to dawn upon mankind with 
the discovery of the gases, and with the commencement 
of the French revolution, and in these later days with the 
progress of the Bible Society. In courts of justice, for in- 
stance, how beautifully would this new science supply any 
little deficiency of evidence upon trial! If a man were 
arraigned for murder, and the case were doubtful, but he 
were found to have a decided organ for the crime, it would 
be of little matter whether he had committed the specific 
fact in the endictment, or not ; for hanging, if not applicable 
as punishment, would be proper for prevention. Think also 
in state trials what infinite advantages an attorney-general 
might derive from the opinion of a regius professor of crani- 
ology! Even these are but partial benefits. Our generals, 
ministers, and diplomatists would then unerringly be chosen 
by the outside of the head, though a criterion might still be 
wanted to ascertain when it was too thick and when too thin. 
But the greatest advantages are those which this new system 
would afford to education ; for by the joint efforts of Dr. Gall 
and Mr. Edgeworth we should be able to breed up men accord- 
ing to any pattern which parents or guardians might think 
proper to bespeak. The doctor would design the mould, 
and Mr. Edgeworth by his skill in mechanics devise with 



THE DOCTOR. 55 

characteristic ingenuity the best means of making and ap- 
plying it. As soon as the child was born, the professional cap, 
medical, mihtary, theological, commercial, or legal, would 
be put on, and thus he would be perfectly prepared for Mr. 
Edgeworth's admirable system of professional education. I 
will pursue this subject no further than just to hint that the 
materials of the mould may operate sympathetically, and 
therefore that for a lawyer in rus the cap should be made 
of brass, for a divine of lead, for a pohtician of base metal, 
for a soldier of steel, and for a sailor of heart of English 
oak. 

Dr. Gall would doubtless require the naked head to be 
submitted to him for judgment. Contrariwise I opine — and 
all the ladies will agree with me in this opinion — that the 
head ought neither to be stripped, nor even examined in un- 
dress, but that it should be taken with all its accompani- 
ments, wlien the owner has made the best of it ; the accom- 
paniments being not unfrequently more indicative than the 
features themselves. Long ago the question whether a man 
is most like himself dressed or undressed, was propounded to 
the British Apollo : and it was answered by the oracle that 
a man of God Almighty's making is most hke himself when 
undressed; but a man of a tailor's, periwig-maker's, and 
seamstress's making, when dressed. The oracle answered 
rightly ; for no man can select his own eyes, nose, or mouth ; 
but his wig and his whiskers are of his own choosing. And 
to use an illustrious instance, how much of character is there 
in that awful wig which always in its box accompanies Dr. 
Parr upon his visits of ceremony, that it may be put on in 
the hall, with all its feathery honours thick upon it, not a 
curl deranged, a hair flattened, or a particle of powder wasted 
on the way ! 

But if we would form a judgment of the interior of that 
portentous head which is thus formidably obumbrated, how 
could it be done so well as by beholding the doctor among 
his books, and there seeing the food upon which his terrific 
intellect is fed. There we should see the accents, quantities, 
dialects, digammas, and other such small gear as in these days 
constitute the complete armour of a perfect scholar; and by 
thus discovering what goes into the head we might form a 
fair estimate of what was likely to come out of it. This is 
a truth which, with many others of equal importance, will be 
beautifully elucidated in this nonpareil history. For Daniel 
Dove the father had a collection of books ; they were not 
so numerous as those of his contemporary Harley, famous 
for his library, and infamous for the peace of Utrecht; but 
he was perfectly conversant with all their contents, which is 
more than could be said of the Earl of Oxford. 

Reader, whether thou art man, woman, or child, thou art 
doubtless acquainted with the doctrine of association as in- 



56 THE DOCTOR. 

culcated by the great Mr. Locke and his disciples. But never 
hast thou seen that doctrine so richly and so entirely exem- 
plified as in this great history, the association of ideas being, 
in oriental phrase, the silken thread upon which its pearls are 
strung. And never wilt thou see it so clearly and delight- 
fully illustrated, not even if the ingenious Mr. John Jones 
should one day give to the world the whole twelve volumes 
in which he has proved the authenticity of the Gospel His- 
tory, by bringing the narratives of the four evangelists to 
the test of Mr. Locke's metaphysics. 

" Desultoriness," says Mr. Danby, " may often be the mark 
of a full head ; connection must proceed from a thoughtful 
one." 



CHAPTER VL P. I. 

▲ COLLECTION OF BOOKS, NONE OF W^HICH ARE INCLUDED AMONG THE 
PUBLICATIONS OF ANY SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF KNOW- 
LEDGE RELIGIOUS OR PROFANE HAPPINESS IN HUMBLE LIFE. 

Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis, 
Quern non mordaci resplendens gloria fuco 
Solicitat, non fastosimala gaudia luxus, 
Sed tacitos sinit ire dies, et paupere cultu 
Exigit innocuae tranquilla silentia vitse. 

POLITIAN. 

Happy for Daniel, he lived before the age of magazines, 
reviews, cyclopaedias, elegant extracts, and literary news- 
papers, so that he gathered the fruit of knowledge for him- 
self, instead of receiving it from the dirty fingers of a retail 
vender. His books were few in number, but they were all 
weighty either in matter or in size. They consisted of the 
Morte d'Arthur in the fine black-letter edition of Copland; 
Plutarch's Morals, and Pliny's Natural History, two goodly 
folios, full as an egg of meat, and both translated by that old 
worthy, Philemon, who, for the service which he rendered to 
his contemporaries and to his countrymen, deserves to be 
called the best of the Hollands, without disparaging either the 
lord or the doctor of that appellation. The whole works of 
Joshua Sylvester; (whose name, let me tell thee, reader, in 
passing, was accented upon the first syllable by his contem- 
poraries, not as now upon the second ;) Jean Petit's History of 
the Netherlands, translated and continued by Edward Grime- 
ston, another worthy of the Philemon order ; Sir Keneim 
Digby's Discourses ; Stowe's Chronicle ; Joshua Barnes's 
Life of Edward IH. ; " Ripley Revived, by Eirenaeus Philale- 



THE DOCTOR. 



57 



thes, an Englishman styling himself Citizen of the World," 
with its mysterious frontispiece representing the Domus Na- 
turce, to which, jYil deest nisi clavis : the Pilgrim's Progress ; 
two volumes of Ozeil's translation of the Rabelais ; Latimer's 
Sermons ; and the last volume of Fox's Martyrs, which lat- 
ter book had been brought him by his wife. The Pilgrim's 
Progress was a godmother's present to his son : the odd vol- 
umes of Rabelais he had picked up at Kendal, at a sale, in a 
lot with Ripley Revived and Plutarch's Morals : the others 
he had inherited. 

Daniel had looked into all these books, read most of them, 
and believed all that he read, except Rabelais, which he could 
not tell what to make of. He was not, however, one of those 
persons who complacently suppose everything to be non- 
sense which they do not perfectly comprehend, or flatter 
themselves that they do. His simple heart judged of books 
by what they ought to be, little knowing what they are. It 
never occurred to him tliat anything would be printed which 
was not worth printing, anything which did not convey ei- 
ther reasonable delight or useful instruction: and he was 
no more disposed to doubt the truth of what he read, than 
to question the veracity of his neighbour, or any one who 
had no interest in deceiving him. A book carried with it to 
him authority in its very aspect. The Morte d'Arthur, there- 
fore, he received for authentic history, just as he did the 
painful chronicle of honest John Stowe, and the Barnesian la- 
bours of Joshua the self-satisfied : there was nothing in it 
indeed which stirred his Enghsh blood like the battles of 
Cressy, and Poictiers, and Najara; yet, on the whole, he pre 
ferred it to Barnes's story, believed in Sir Tor, Sir Tristram, 
Sir Lancelot, and Sir Lamorack as entirely as in Sir John 
Chandos, the Captal de Buche, and the Black Prince, and 
liked them better. 

Latimer and Du Eartas he used sometimes to read aloud 
on Sundays; and if the departed take cognizance of what 
passes on earth, and poets derive any satisfaction from that 
posthumous applause which is generally the only reward of 
those who deserve it, Sylvester might have found some com- 
pensation for the undeserved neglect into which his works 
had sunk, by the full and devout delight which his rattling 
rhymes and quaint collocations afforded to this reader. The 
silver-tongued Sylvester, however, was reserved for a Sab- 
bath book ; as a weekday author Daniel preferred Pliny, for 
the same reason that bread and cheese, or a rasher of hung 
mutton, contented his palate better than a sillabub. He fre- 
quently regretted that so knowing a writer had never seen or 
heard of Wethercote and Yordas caves ; the ebbing and flow- 
ing spring at Giggleswick, Malham Cove, and Gordale Scar, 
that he might have described them among the wonders of the 
■'"'^Id. Omne ignotum pro magnijico is a maxim which will 



58 THE DOCTOR. 

not in all cases hold good. There are things which we do 
not undervalue because we are familiar with them, but which 
are admired the more the more thoroughly they are known 
and understood ; it is thus with the grand objects of nature 
and the finest works of art — with whatsoever is truly great 
and excellent. Daniel was not deficient in imagination ; but 
no description of places which h« had never seen, however 
exaggerated, (as such things always are,) impressed him so 
strongly as these objects in his own neighbourhood, which 
he had known from childhood. Three or four times in his 
life it had happened that strangers, with a curiosity as uncom- 
mon in that age as it is general in this, came from afar to 
visit these wonders of the West Riding, and Daniel accom- 
panied them with a delight such as he never experienced on 
any other occasion. 

But the author in whom he delighted most was Plutarch, 
of whose works he was lucky enough to possess the worthier 
half: if the other had perished, Plutarch would not have been 
a popular writer, but he would have held a higher place in 
the estimation of the judicious. Daniel could have posed a 
candidate for university honours, and perhaps the examiner 
too, with some of the odd learning which he had stored up in 
his memory from these great repositories of ancient know- 
ledge. Refusing all reward for such services, the strangers 
to whom he officiated as a guide, though they perceived that 
he was an extraordinaiy person, were httle aware how much 
information he had acquired, and of how strange a kind. His 
talk with them did not go beyond the subjects which the 
scenes they came to visit naturally suggested, and they won- 
dered more at the questions he asked, than at anything which 
he advanced himself: for his disposition was naturally shy, 
and that which had been bashfulness in j^outh assumed the 
appearance of reserve as he advanced in life ; for having none 
to communicate with upon his favourite studies, he lived in 
an intellectual world of his own, a mental solitude as com- 
plete as that of Alexander Selkirk or Robinson Crusoe. Even 
to the curate, his conversation, if he had touched upon his 
books, would have been heathen Greek ; and to speak the truth 
plainly, without knowing a letter of that language, he knew 
more about the Greeks than ni'ne tenths of the clergy at that 
time, including all the dissenters, and than nine tenths of the 
schoolmasters also. 

Our good Daniel had none of that confidence which so 
usually and so unpleasantly characterizes self-taught men. 
In fact, he was by no means aware of the extent of his 
acquirements, all that he knew in this kind having been 
acquired for amusement, not for use. He had never attempted 
to teach himself anything. These books had lain in his way 
in boyhood, or fallen in it afterward ; and the perusal of them, 
intently as it was followed, was always accounted by him to 



THE DOCTOR. 69 

be nothing more than recreation. None of his daily business 
had ever been neglected for it ; he cultivated his fields and his 
garden, repaired his vi^alls, looked to the stable, tended his 
cows, and salved his sheep, as dihgently and as contentedly 
as if he had possessed neither capacity nor inclination for 
any higher employments. Yet Daniel was one of those men 
who, if disposition and aptitude were not overruled by cir- 
cumstances, would have grown pale with study, instead of 
being bronzed and hardened by sun, and wind, and rain. 
There were in him undeveloped talents which might have 
raised him to distinction as an antiquary, a virtuoso of the 
Royal Society, a poet, or a theologian, to whichever course 
the bias in his ball of fortune had inclined. But he had not a 
particle of envy in his composition. He thought, indeed, that 
if he had had grammar learning in his youth like the curate, 
he would have made more use of it ; but there was nothing 
either of the sourness or bitterness (call it which you please) 
of repining in this natural reflection. 

Never, indeed, was any man more contented with doing his 
duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call 
him. And well he might be so, for no man ever passed 
through the world with less to disquiet or to sour him. Bred 
up in habits which secured the continuance of that humble 
but sure independence in which he was born, he had never 
known what it was to be anxious for the future. At the age 
of twenty-five he had brought home a wife, the daughter of a 
little landholder like himself, with fifteen pounds for her por- 
tion ^ and the truelove of his youth proved to him a faithful 
helpmate in those years when the dream of life is over, and 
we live in its realities. If at any time there had been some 
alloy in his happiness, it was when there appeared reason to 
suppose that in him his family would be extinct ; for though 
no man knows what parental feelings are till he has experi- 
enced them, and Daniel therefore knew not the whole value of 
that which he had never enjoyed, the desire of progeny is nat- 
ural to the heart of man ; and though Daniel had neither large 
estates nor an illustrious name to transmit, it was an unwel- 
come thought that the little portion of the earth which had 
belonged to his fathers time out of mind, should pass into the 
possession of some stranger, who would tread on their graves 
and his own without any regard to the dust that lay beneath. 
That uneasy apprehension was removed after he had been 
married fifteen years, when to the great joy of both parents, 
because they had long ceased to entertain any hope of such 
an event, their wishes were fulfilled in the birth of a son. 
This their only child was healthy, apt, and docile, to all 
appearance as happily disposed in mind and body as a father's 
heart could wish. If they had fine weather for winning their 
hay or shearing their corn, they thanked God for it ; if the 
season proved unfavourable the labour was only a little the 



60 THE DOCTOR. 

more, and the crop a little the worse. Their stations secured 
them from want, and they had no wish beyond it. What 
more had Daniel to desire 1 

The following passage in the divine Du Bartas he used to 
read with peculiar satisfaction, applying it to himself: — 

" Oh thrice, thrice happy he, who shuns the cares 
Of city troubles, and of state affairs ; 
And, serving Ceres, tills with his own team 
His own free land, left by his friends to him ! 

Never pale Envy's poisony heads do hiss 
To gnaw his heart : nor vultare Avarice : 
His fields' bounds bound his thoughts : he never sups, 
For nectar, poison mixed in silver cups : 
Neither in golden platters doth he hck, 
For sweet ambrosia, deadly arsenic ; 
His hand's his bowl, (better than plate or glass,) 
The silver brook his sweetest hippocrass ; 
Milk, cheese, and fruit, (fruits of his own endeavour,) 
Dress'd without dressing, hath he ready ever. 

False counsellors, (concealers of the law,) 
Turncoat attorneys that with both hands draw 
Sly pettifoggers, wranglers at the bar. 
Proud purse leeches, harpies of Westminster, 
With feigned chiding, and foul jarring noise, 
Break not his brain, nor interrupt his joys ; 
But cheerful birds chirping him sweet good-morrows 
With nature's music do beguile his sorrows ; 
Teaching the fragrant forests day by day 
The diapason of their heavenly lay. 

His wandering vessel, reeling to and fro * 

On th' ireful ocean, (as the winds do blow,) 
With sudden tempest is not overwhirled. 
To seek his sad death in another world: 
But leading all his life at home in peace, 
Always in sight of his own smoke, no seas, 
No other seas he knows, no other torrent. 
Than that which waters with its silver current 
His native meadows ; and that very earth 
Shall give him burial which first gave him birth. 

To summon timely sleep, he doth not need 
^thiop's cold rush, nor drowsy poppy seed ; 
Nor keep in consort (as Maecenas did) 
Luxurious Villains — (Viols I should have said ;) 
Bat on green carpets Ihrum'd with mossy bever, 
Fringing the round skirts of his winding river, 
The stream's mild murmur, as it gently gushes. 
His healthy limbs in quiet slumber hushes. 

Drum, fife, and trumpet, with their loud alarms 
Make him not start out of his sleep, to arms ; 
Nor dear respect of some great general, 
Him from his bed unto the bloclc doth call. 
The crested cock sings " Hunt-is-up^' to him. 
Limits his rest, and makes him stir betime. 
To walk the mountains and the flow'ry meads 
Impearl'd with tears which great Aurora sheds. 



THE DOCTOR. 61 

Never gross air poisoned in stinking streets, 
To choke his spirit, his tender nostril meets ; 
But th' open sky where at fulJ breath he lives. 
Still keeps him sound, and still new stomach gives. 
And death, dread sergeant of the Eternal Judge. 
Comes very late to his sole-seated lodge." 



CHAPTER VII. P. I. 

RUSTIC PHILOSOPHY AN EXPERIMENT UPON MOONSHINE. 

Quien comienza en juventud 
A bien obrar, 
Senal es de no errar 
En senetud. 

Proverbios del Marques de Santillana. 

It is not, however, for man to rest in absolute contentment. 
He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, 
unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of 
immortality which is his portion. Having- nothing- to desire 
for himself, Daniel's ambition had taken a natural direction 
and fixed upon his son. He was resolved that the boy should 
be made a scholar; not with the prospect of advancing him 
in the world, but in the hope that he might become a phi- 
losopher, and take as much delight in the books which he 
would inherit as his father had done before him. Riches, and 
rank, and power appeared in his judgment to be nothing when 
compared to philosophy ; and herein he was as true a phi- 
losopher as if he had studied in the Porch, or walked the 
groves of Academus. 

It was not, however, for this — for he was as little given to 
talk of his opinions as to display his reading — but for his 
retired habits, and general character, and some odd practices 
into which his books had led him, that he was commonly 
called Flossofer Daniel by his neighbours. The appellation 
was not affixed in derision, but respectfully and as his due; 
for he bore his faculties too meekly ever to excite an envious 
or an ill-natured feeling in any one. Rural flossofers were 
not uncommon in those days, though in the progress of 
society they have disappeared like crokers, bowyers, lori- 
mers, armourers, running footmen, and other descriptions 
of men whose occupations are gone by. But they were of a 
different order from our Daniel. They were usually philo- 
maths, students in astrology, or the celestial science, and 
not unfrequently empirics or downright quacks. Between 
twenty and thirty almanacs used to be pubhshed every year 
by men of this description, some of them versed enough in 



62 THE DOCTOR. 

mathematics to have done honour to Cambridge, had the 
fates allowed ; and others such proficients in roguery, that 
they would have done equal honour to the whipping post. 

A man of a different stamp from either came in declining 
life to settle at Ingleton in the humble capacity of school- 
master, a little before young Daniel was capable of more 
instruction than could be given him at home. Richard Guy 
was his name ; he is the person to whom the lovers of old 
rhyme are indebted for the preservation of the old poem of 
Flodden Field, which he transcribed from an ancient manu- 
script, and which was printed from his transcript by Thomas 
Gent of York. In his way through the world, which had 
not been along the king's high Dunstable road, Guy had 
picked up a competent share of Latin, a little Greek, some 
practical knowledge of physic, and more of its theory ; astrol- 
ogy enough to cast a nativity, and more acquaintance with 
alchymy than has often been possessed by one who never 
burnt his fingers in its processes. These acquirements were 
grafted on a disposition as obliging as it was easy ; and he 
was beholden to nature for an understanding so clear and 
quick that it might have raised him to some distinction in 
the world if he had not been under the influence of an imagi- 
nation at once lively and credulous. Five-and-fifty years 
had taught him none of the world's Avisdom ; they had 
sobered his mind without maturing it ; but he had a wise 
heart, and the wisdom of the heart is worth all other wisdom. 

Daniel was too far advanced in life to fall in friendship ; he 
felt a certain degree of attractiveness in this person's com- 
pany ; there was, however, so much of what may better be 
called reticence than reserve in his own quiet habitual man- 
ners, that it would have been long before their acquaintance 
ripened into anything like intimacy, if an accidental circum- 
stance had not brought out the latent sympathy which on 
both sides had till then rather been apprehended than under- 
stood. They were walking together one day when young 
Daniel, who was then in his sixth year, looking up in his 
father's face, proposed this question : " Will it be any harm, 
father, if I steal five beans when next 1 go into Jonathan 
Dowthwaites, if I can do it without any one's seeing me T' 

" And what wouldst thou steal beans for," was the reply, 
" when anybody would give them to thee, and when thou 
knowest there are plenty at home 1" 

"But it won't do to have them given, father," the boy 
replied. " They are to charm away my warts. Uncle Wil- 
liam says I must steal five beans, a bean for every wart, and 
tie them carefully up in paper, and carry them to a place 
where two roads cross, and then drop them, and walk away 
without ever once looking behind me. And then the warts 
will go away from me, and come upon the hands of the per- 
son that picks up the beans." 



THE DOCTOR. 63 

"Nay, boy," the father made answer; "that charm Avas 
never taught by a white witch I If thy warts are a trouble 
to thee, they would be a trouble to any one else ; and to get 
rid of an evil from ourselves, Daniel, by bringing it upon 
another, is against our duty to our neighbour. Have nothing 
to do with a charm like that !" 

" May I steal a piece of raw beef then," rejoined the boy, 
" and rub the warts with it and bury it 1 For uncle says that 
will do, and as the beef rots, so the warts will waste away." 

" Daniel," said the father, " those can be no lawful charms 
that begin with stealing ; I could tell thee how to cure thy 
warts in a better manner. There is an infallible way, which 
is by washing the hands in moonshine, but then the moon- 
shine must be caught in a bright silver basin. You wash and 
wash in the basin, and a cold moisture will be felt upon the 
hands, proceeding from the cold and moist rays of the moon." 

" But what shall we do for a silver basin ]" said little Da- 
niel, 

The father answered, " A pewter dish might be tried if it 
were made very bright ; but it is not deep enough. The 
brass kettle, perhaps, might do better." 

" Nay," said Guy, who had now begun to attend with some 
interest, " the shape of a kettle is not suitable. It should be 
a concave vessel, so as to concentrate the rays. Joshua 
Wilson, I dare say, would lend his brass basin, which he can 
very well spare at the hour you want it, because nobody 
comes to be shaved by moonlight. The moon rises early 
enough to serve at this time. If you come in this evening 
at six o'clock, I will speak to Joshua in the mean time, and 
have the basin as bright and shining as a good scouring can 
make it. The experiment is curious, and I should like to 
see it tried. Where, Daniel, didst thou learn it ?" " I read 
it," replied Daniel, " in Sir Kenelm Digby's Discourses, and 
he says it never fails." 

Accordingly the parties met at the appointed hour. Mam- 
brino's helmet when new from the armourers, or when fur- 
bished for a tournament, was not brighter than Guy had ren- 
dered the inside of the barber's basin. Schoolmaster, father 
and son retired to a place out of observation, by the side of 
the river, a wild stream tumbling among the huge stones 
which it had brought down from the hills. On one of 
these stones sat Daniel the elder, holding the basin in such 
an inclination towards the moon that there should be no 
shadow in it ; Guy directed the boy where to place himself 
so as not to intercept the light, and stood looking compla- 
cently on, while young Daniel revolved his hands one in 
another within the empty basin, as if washing them. " I feel 
them cold and clammy, father !" said the boy. (It was the 
beginning of November.) " Ay," rephed the father, " that's 



64 THE DOCTOR. 

the cold moisture of the moon !" " Ay !" echoed the school- 
master, and nodded his head in confirmation. 

The operation was repeated on the two following nights; 
and Daniel would have kept up his son two hours later than 
his regular time of rest to continue it on the third if the eve- 
ning had not set in with clouds and rain. In spite of the pa- 
tient's belief that the warts would waste away and were wast- 
ing, (for Prince Hohenlohe could not require more entire 
faith than was given on this occasion,) no alteration could be 
perceived in them at a fortnight's end. Daniel thought the 
experiment had failed because it had not been repeated suflEi- 
ciently often, and perhaps continued long enough. But the 
schoolmaster was of opinion that the cause of failure was in 
the basin : for that silver being the lunar metal would by 
affinity assist the influential virtues of the moonlight, which 
finding no such affinity in a mixed metal of baser compounds, 
might contrariwise have its potential qualities weakened, or 
even destroyed, when received in a brazen vessel, and reflected 
from it. Flossofer Daniel assented to this theory. Never- 
theless, as the child got rid of his troublesome excrescences 
in the course of three or four months, all parties, disregarding 
the lapse of time at first, and afterward fairly forgetting it, 
agreed that the remedy had been eff'ectual, and Sir Kenelm, 
if he had been living, might have procured the solemn attest- 
ation of men more veracious than himself that moonshine 
was an infallible cure for warts. 



CHAPTER VIII. P. I. 

A KIND SCHOOLMASTER AND A HAPPY SCHOOL BOY. 

Though happily thou wilt say t"hat wands be to be wrought when they 
are green, lest they rather break than bend when they be dry, yet know 
also that he that bendeth a twig because he would see if it would bow by 
strength, may chance to have a crooked tree when he would have a 
straight. — Euphues. 

From this time the two flossofers were friends. Daniel 
seldom went to Ingleton without looking in upon Guy, if it 
were between school hours. Guy on his part would walk as 
far with him on the way back as the tether of his own time 
allowed, and frequently on Saturdays and Sundays he strolled 
out and took a seat by Daniel's fireside. Even the weary- 
ing occupation of hearing one generation of urchins after 
another repeat a-b-ab, hammering the first rules of arithmetic 
into leaden heads, and pacing like a horse in a mill the same 
dull dragging round day after day, had neither diminished 



THE DOCTOR. 65 

Guy-s good nature, nor lessened his love for children. He 
had from the first conceived a liking for young Daniel, both 
because of the right principle which was evinced by the man- 
ner in which he proposed the question concerning stealing 
the beans, and of the profound gravity (worthy of a flosso- 
fer's son) with which he behaved in the affair of the moon- 
shine. All that he saw and heard of him tended to confirm 
this favourable prepossession; and the boy, who had been 
taught to read in the Bible and in Stowe's Chronicle, was 
committed to his tuition at seven years of age. 

Five days in the week (for in the North of England Satur- 
day as well as Sunday is a sabbath to the schoolmaster) did 
young Daniel, after supping his porringer of oat-meal pottage, 
set off to school, with a little basket containing his dinner in 
his hand. This provision usually consisted of oatcake and 
cheese, the latter in goodly proportion, but of the most frugal 
quality, whatever cream the milk afforded having been con- 
signed to the butter tub. Sometimes it was a piece of cold 
bacon or cold pork ; and in winter there was the luxury of a 
shred pie, which is a coarse north country edition of the pie 
abhorred by Puritans. The distance was in those days called 
two miles ; but miles of such long measure that they were 
for him a good hour's walk at a cheerful pace. He never 
loitered on the way, being at all times brisk in his movements, 
and going to school with a spirit as light as when he returned 
from it, like one whose blessed lot it was never to have ex- 
perienced, and therefore never to stand in fear of severity or 
unkindness. For he was not more a favourite with Guy for 
his docility, and regularity, and diligence, than he was with 
his schoolfellows for his thorough good nature and a certain 
original oddity of humour. 

There are some boys wh^o take as much pleasure in exer- 
cising their intellectual faculties, as others do when putting 
forth the power of arms and legs in boisterous exertion. 
Young Daniel was from his childhood fond of books. Wil- 
liam Dove used to say he was a chip of the old block ; and 
this hereditary disposition was regarded with much satisfac- 
tion by both parents, Dinah having no higher ambition nor 
better wish for her son, than that he might prove like his fa- 
ther in all things. This being the bent of his nature, the boy 
having a kind master as well as a happy home, never tasted 
of what old Lily calls (and well might call) the wearisome 
bitterness of the scholar's learning. He was never subject 
to the brutal discipline of the Udals, and Busbys, and Bow- 
yers, and Parrs, and other less notorious tyrants who have 
trodden in their steps ; nor was any of that inhuman injus- 
tice ever exercised upon him to break his spirit, for which it 
is to be hoped Dean Colet has paid in purgatory: to be 
hoped, I say, because if there be no purgatory, the dean may 
have gone farther and fared worse. Being the only Laiiner 



66 THE DOCTOR. 

in the school, his lessons were heard with more interest and 
less formality. Guy observed his progress with almost as 
much delight and as much hope as Daniel himself. A school- 
master who likes his vocation feels towards the boys who de- 
serve his favour something like a thrifty and thriving father 
towards the children for whom he is scraping together 
wealth ; he is contented that his humble and patient industry 
should produce fruit, not for himself, but for them, and looks 
with pride to a result in which it is impossible for him to par- 
take, and which in all likelihood he may never live to see. 
Even some of the old phlebotomists have had this feehng to 
redeem them. 



*' Sir," says the compositor to the corrector of the press, 
" there is no heading in the copy for this chapter. What 
must I do 1" 

" Leave a space for it," the corrector replies. " It is a 
strange sort of book ; but I dare say the author has a reason 
for everything he says or does, and most likely you will find 
out his meaning as you set up." 

Right, Mr. Corrector ! you are a judicious person, free from 
the common vice of finding fault with what you do not un- 
derstand. My meaning will be explained presently. And 
having thus prologized, we will draw a line, if you please, and 
begin. 



Ten measures of garrulity, says the Talmud, were sent 
down upon the earth, and the women took nine. 

I have known in my time eight terrific talkers; and five of 
them were of the masculine gender. 

But supposing that the rabbis were right in allotting to the 
women a ninefold proportion of talkativeness, I confess that 
I have inherited my mother's share. 

I am liberal of my inheritance, and the public shall have 
the full benefit of it. 

And here, if my gentle public will consider to what profita- 
ble uses this gift might have been applied, the disinterested- 
ness of my disposition in having thus benevolently dedicated 
it to their service will doubtless be appreciated as it deserves 
by their discrimination and generosity. Had I carried it to 
the pulpit, think now how I might have filled the seats, and 
raised the prices of a private chapel ! Had I taken it to 



THE DOCTOR. 67 

the bar, think how I could have mystified a judge, and bam- 
boozled a jury ! Had I displayed it in the senate, think how 
I could have talked against time, for the purpose of delaying 
a division, till the expected numbers could be brought to- 
gether ; or how efficient a part I could have borne in the pa- 
triotic design of impeding the business of a session, prolong- 
ing and multiplying the debates, and worrying a minister out 
of his senses and his life- 

Diis aliter visum. I am what I was to be, what it is best 
for myself that I should oe. and for you, mv public, also. 
The rough-hewn plan?; of my destination have been better 
shaped for me by Providence than I could have shaped them 
for myself. 

But to the purpose of this chapter, >7/hich is as headless as 
the whigs — observe, my public, I have not said as brainless. 
If it were, the book would be worth no more than a new tra- 
gedy of Lord Byron's ; or an old number of Mr. Jeffrey's Re- 
view, when its prophecies have proved false, its blunders have 
been exposed, and its slander stinks. 

Everything here shall be in order. The digressions into 
which this gift of discourse may lead me must not interrupt 
the arrangement of our history. Never shall it be said of 
the unknown, that " he draweth out the thread of his ver- 
bosity finer than the staple of his argument." We have a 
journey to perform from Dan to Beersheba, and we must 
halt occasionally by the way. Matter will arise contingent to 
the story, correlative to it, or excrescent from it ; not neces- 
sary to its progress, and yet indispensable for your delight, 
my gentle public, and for mine own ease. My public would 
not have me stifle the ajfflatus wheiT I am labouring with it, 
and in the condition af Elihu as desr;ribed by himself in the 
18th and 19th verses of the xxxii. chapter of the book of 
Job. 

Quemadmodum ccelator oculos diu intentos acfatigatos remit- 
tit atque avocat, et, vt did solet, pascit ; sic nos animum ali- 
quando debemus relaxare et quibusdam oUectamentis rejicere, 
Sed ipsa ohlectamenta opera sint ; ex his quoque si obsei'vaveris, 
sumes quod possit fieri salutare* 

But that the beautiful structure of this history may in no- 
wise be deranged, such matter shall be distributed into dis- 
tinct chapters in the way of intercalation ; a device of which, 
as it respects the year, Adam is believed to have been the 
inventor ; but according to the author of the book of Jalkut, 
it was only transmitted by him to his descendants, being one 
of the things which he received by revelation. 

How then shall these chapters be annominated 1 Inter- 
calary they shall not. That word will send some of my 
readers to Johnson's Dictionary for its meaning, and others 

* Seneca, epistle 58. 



68 THE DOCTOR. 

to Sheridan or Walker for its pronunciation. Besides, I have 
a dislike to all mongrel words, and an especial dislike for 
strange compounds into which a preposition enters. I owe 
them a grudge. They make one of the main difficulties in 
Greek and German. 

From our own calendars we cannot borrow an appellation. 
In the republican one of our neighbours, when the revolution- 
ary fever was at its height, the supplemental days were 
called sansculottedes. The Spaniards would call them dias 
descamisados. The holders of liberal opinions in England 
would call them radical days. A hint might be taken hence, 
and we might name them radical chapters, as having the root 
of the matter in them ; or ramal, if there were such a word, 
upon the analogy of the branch Bible societies. Or ramage, 
as the King of Cockayne hath his foliage. But they would 
not be truly and philosophically designated by these names. 
They are not branches from the tree of this history, neither 
are they its leaves ; but rather choice garlands suspended 
there to adorn it on festival days. They may be likened to 
the waste weirs of a canal, or the safety valves of a steam 
engine, (my gentle public would not have me stifle the 
afflatus !) interludes, symphonies between the acts, volunta- 
ries during the service, resting-places on the ascent of a 
church tower, angular recesses of an old bridge, into which 
foot passengers may retire from carriages or horsemen; 
houses of call upon the road ; seats by the wayside, such as 
those which were provided by the Man of Ross, or the not 
less meritorious Woman of Chippenham, Maud Heath, of 
Langley Burrel ; hospices on the passages of the Alps ; capes 
of Good Hope, or isles of St. Helena — yea, islands of Tinian 
or Juan Fernandez, upon the long voyage whereon we are 
bound. 

Leap chapters they cannot properly be called ; and if we 
were to call them ha has ! as being chapters which the reader 
may leap if he likes, the name would appear rather strained 
than I significant, and might be justly censured as more re- 
markable for affectation than for aptness. For the same 
reason I reject the designation of intermeans, though it hath 
the sanction of great Ben's authority. 

Among the requisites for an accomplished writer, Steele 
enumerates the skill whereby common words are started into 
new significations. I will not presume so far upon that 
talent — modesty forbids me — as to call these intervening 
chapters either interpellations, or interpositions, or interlo- 
cations, or intervals. Take this, reader, for a general rule, 
that the readiest and plainest style is the most forcible ; (if 
the head be but properly stored ;) and that in all ordinary 
cases the word which first presents itself is the best ; even 
as in all matters of right and wrong, the first feeling is that 
which the heart owns and the conscience ratifies. 



THE DOCTOR. 69 

But for a new occasion, a new word, or a new composite 
must be formed. Therefore I will strike one in the mint of 
analogy, in which alone the king's English must be coined, 
and call thenii interchapters. And thus endeth 



INTERCHAPTER I. 

REMARKS IN THE PRLNTING OFFICE THE AUTHOR CONFESSES A 

DISPOSITION TO GARRULITY PROPRIETY OF PROVIDING CER- 
TAIN CHAPTERS FOR THE RECEPTION OF HIS EXTRANEOUS DIS- 
COURSE CHOICE OF AN APPELLATION FOR SUCH CHAPTERS. 

Perque vices aliquid, quod tempera longa videri 
Nonsinat, in medium vacuas referemus ad aures. 

Ovid. 



CHAPTER IX. P. T. 

EXCEPTIONS TO ONE OF KING SOLOMON's RULES — A WINTEr's 
EVENING AT DANIEL's FIRESIDE. 

These are my thoughts ; I might have spun them out into a greater 
length ; but I think a little plot of ground, thick sown, is better than a 
great field, which, for the most part of it, lies fallow. — Norris. 

" Train up a child in the way he should go : and when he 
is old he will not depart from it." Generally speaking, it 
will be found so ; but is there any other rule to which there 
are so many exceptions 1 

Ask the serious Christian, as he calls himself, or the pro- 
fessor, (another and more fitting appellative which the Chris- 
tian Pharisees have chosen for themselves,) ask him whether 
he has found it hold good. Whether his sons, when they 
attained to years of discretion, (which are the most indiscreet 
years in the course of human life,) have profited as he ex- 
pected by the long extemporaneous prayers to which they 
listened night and morning, the sad Sabbaths which they 
were compelled to observe, and the soporific sermons which 
closed the domestic religiosities of those melancholy days. 
Ask thenf if this discipline has prevented them from running 
headlong into the follies and vices of the age — from being 
birdlimed by dissipation — or caught in the spider's web of 
sophistry and unbelief. " It is no doubt a true observation," 
says Bishop Patrick, " that the ready way to make the minds 
of youth grow awry, is to lace them too hard, by denying 
them their just freedom." 



70 THE DOCTOR. 

Ask the old faithful servant of Mammon, whom Mammon 
has rewarded to his heart's desire, and in whom the acquisi- 
tion of riches has only increased his eagerness for acquiring 
more — ask him whether he has succeeded in training up his 
heir to the same service. He will tell you that the young 
man is to be found upon race grounds, and in gaminghouses, 
that he is taking his swing of extravagance and excess, and 
is on the high road to ruin. 

Ask the wealthy Quaker, the pillar of the meeting— most 
orthodox in heterodoxy — who never wore a garment of for- 
bidden cut or colour, never bent his body in salutation, or his 
knees in prayer — never uttered the heathen name of a day 
or month, nor ever addressed himself to any person without 
religiously speaking illegitimate English — ask him how it 
has happened that the tailor has converted his sons. He 
will fold his hands, and twirl his thumbs mournfully in si- 
lence. It has not been for want of training them in the way 
wherein it was his wish that they should go. 

You are about, sir, to send your son to a public school ; 
Eton or Westminster ; Winchester or Harrow ; Rugby or 
the Charterhouse, no matter which. He may come from 
either an accomplished scholar to the utmost extent that 
school education can make him so ; he may be the better 
both for its discipline and its want of discipline ; it may serve 
liim excellently well as a preparatory school for the world 
mto which he is about to enter. But also he may come 
away an empty coxcomb or a hardened brute — a spendthrift 
— a profligate — a blackguard or a sot. 

To put a boy in the way he should go, is like sending out 
a ship well found, well manned and stored, and with a careful 
captain; but there are rocks and shallows in her course, 
winds and currents to be encountered, and all the contingen- 
cies and perils of the sea. 

How often has it been seen that sons, not otherwise defi- 
cient in duty towards their parents, have, in the most mo- 
mentous concerns of life, taken the course most opposite to 
that in which they were trained to go, going wrong where 
the father would have directed them aright, or taking the 
right path in spite of all inducements and endeavours for 
leading them wrong ! The son of Charles Wesley, born and 
bred in Methodism, and bound to it by all the strongest ties 
of pride and prejudice, became a Papist. This, indeed, was 
but passing from one erroneous persuasion to another, and a 
more inviting one. But Isaac Casaubon also had the grief 
of seeing a son seduced into the Romish superstition, and on 
the part of that great and excellent man, there had been no 
want of discretion in training him, nor of sound learning and 
sound wisdom. Archbishop Leighton, an honour to his 
church, his country, and his kind, was the child of one of 
those firebrands who kindled the Great Rebellion. And 



THE DOCTOR 71 

Franklin had a son, who, notwithstanding the example of his 
father, (and such a father !) continued steadfast in his duty as 
a soldier and a subject; he took the unsuccessful side — but 

nunquam successu crescat honestum.* 

No such disappointment was destined to befall our Daniel. 
The way in which he trained up his son was that into which 
the bent of the boy's own nature would have led him ; and 
all circumstances combined to favour the tendency of his 
education. The country abounding in natural objects of 
sublimity and beauty (some of these singular in their kind) 
might have impressed a duller imagination than had fallen to 
his lot ; and that imagination had time enough for its work- 
ings during his solitary walks to and from school morning 
and evening. His home w^as in a lonely spot ; and having 
neither brother nor sister, nor neighbours near enough in any 
degree to supply their place as playmates, he became his 
father's companion imperceptibly as he ceased to be his fond- 
ling. And the effect was hardly less apparent in Daniel than 
in the boy. He was no longer the same taciturn person as 
of yore ; it seemed as if his tongue had been loosened, and 
when the reservoirs of his knowledge were opened they 
flowed freely. 

Their chimney corner on a winter's evening presented a 
group not unworthy of Sir Joshua's pencil. There sat 
Daniel, richer in marvellous stories than ever traveller who in 
the days of mendacity returned from the East ; the peat fire 
shining upon a countenance which, weather hardened as it was, 
might have given the painter a model for a patriarch, so rare 
was the miion which it exhibited of intelligence, benevolence, 
and simplicity. There sat the boy with open eyes and ears, 
raised head, and fallen lip, in all the happiness of wonder and 
implicit belief. There sat Dinah, not less proud of her hus- 
band's learning than of the towardly disposition and promis- 
ing talents of her son — twirling the thread at her spinning 
wheel, but attending to all that passed ; and when there was 
a pause in the discourse, fetching a deep sigh, and exclaim- 
ing " Lord bless us ! what wonderful things there are in the 
world!" There also sat Haggy, knitting stockings, and 
sharing in the comforts and enjoyments of the family when 
the day's work was done. And there sat William Dove— 
but VVilUam must have a chapter to himself. 

* Lucan. 



72 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER X. P. I. 

one: who was not so wise as his friends could have wished, 

and yet quite as happy as if he had been wiser nepotism 

not confined to popes. 

There are of madmen as there are of tame, 

All humoured not alike. Some 

Apish and fantastic ; 

And though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image 

So blemished and defaced, yet do they act 

Such antic and such pretty lunacies, 

That spite of sorrow, they will make you smile, 

Dekkee. 

William Dove was Daniel's only surviving brother, seven 
years his junior. He was born with one of those heads in 
which the thin partition that divides great wits from folly is 
wanting. Had he come into the world a century sooner, he 
would have been taken nolens volens into some baron's 
household, to wear motley, make sport for the guests and 
domestics, and live in fear of the rod. But it was his better 
fortune to live in an age when this calamity rendered him 
liable to no such oppression, and to be precisely in that 
station which secured for him all the enjoyments of which 
he was capable, and all the care he needed. In higher life, 
he would probably have been consigned to the keeping of 
strangers who would have taken charge of him for pay ; in a 
humbler degree he must have depended upon the parish for 
support ; or have been made an inmate of one of those moral 
lazarhouses in which age and infancy, the harlot and the 
idiot, the profligate and the unfortunate are herded together. 

William Dove escaped these aggravations of calamity. He 
escaped also that persecution to which he would have been 
exposed in populous places where boys run loose in packs, 
and harden one another in impudence, mischief, and cruelty. 
Natural feeling, when natural feeling is not corrupted, leads 
men to regard persons in his condition with a compassion 
not unmixed with awe. It is common with the country 
people when they speak of such persons to point significantly 
at the head and say, ^Tis not all there: words denoting a 
sense of the mysteriousness of our nature which perhaps 
they feel more deeply on this than on any other occasion. 
No outward and visible deformity can make them so truly 
apprehend how fearfully and wonderfully we are made. 

William Dove's was not a case of fatuity. Though all 



THE DOCTOR. 73 

was not there, there was a great deal. He was what is 
called half saved. Some of his faculties were more acute 
than ordinary, but the power of self-conduct was entirely 
wanting in him. Fortunately, it was supplied by a sense of 
entire dependance which produced entire docility. A dog 
does not obey his master more dutifully than William obeyed 
his brother; and in this obedience there was nothing of 
fear ; with all the strength and simplicity of a child's love, it 
had also the character and merit of a moral attachment. 

The professed and privileged fool was generally character- 
ized by a spice of knavery, and not unfrequently of ma- 
liciousness ; the unnatural situation in which he was placed 
tended to excite such propensities, and even to produce 
them. William had shrewdness enough for the character, 
but nothing of this appeared in his disposition ; ill usage 
might perhaps have awakened it, and to a fearful degree, if 
he had proved as sensible to injury as he was to kindness. 
But he had never felt an injury. He could not have been 
treated with more tenderness in Turkey (where a degree of 
holiness is imputed to persons in his condition) than was 
uniformly shown him within the little sphere of his peram- 
bulations. It was surprising how much he had picked up 
within that little sphere. Whatever event occurred, what- 
ever tale was current, whatever traditions were preserved, 
whatever superstitions were believed, William knew them 
all; and all that his insatiable ear took in, his memory 
hoarded. Half the proverbial sayings in Ray's volume were 
in his head, and as many more with which Ray was unac- 
quainted. He knew many of the stories which our children 
are now reading as novelties in the selections from Grimm's 
Kinder-und Haus-Marchen , and as many of those which are 
collected in the Danish Folk Sagn. And if some zealous 
lover of legendary lore (like poor John Leyden, or Sir 
Walter Scott) had fallen in with him, the Shaksperian 
commentators might perhaps have had the whole story of 
St. Withold ; the Wolf of the World's End might have been 
identified with Fenris, and found to be a relic of the Scalds : 
and Rauf Collyer and John the Reeve might still have been 
as well known as Adam Bell, and Clyni of the Clough, and 
William of Cloudeslie. 

William had a great fondness for his nephew. Let not 
Protestants suppose that Nepotism is an affection confined 
to the dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church. In its 
excess, indeed, it is peculiarly a Papal vice, which is a degree 
higher than a Cardinal one ; but like many other sins, it 
grows out of the corruption of a good feeling. It may be 
questioned whether fond uncles are not as numerous as un- 
kind ones, notwithstanding our recollections of King Richard 
and the Children in the Wood. We may use the epithet 
nepotious for those who carry this fondness to the extent of 



74 THE DOCTOR. 

doting, and as expressing that degree of fondness it may be 
applied to William Dove : he was a nepotious uncle. The 
father regarded young Daniel with a deeper and more 
thoughtful, but not with a fonder aflfection, not with such a 
doting attachment. Dinah herself, though a fond as well as 
careful mother, did not more thoroughly 

Delight to hear 
Her early child misspeak half-uttered words ;* 

and perhaps the boy, so long as he was incapable of distin- 
guishing between their moral qualities, and their relative 
claims to his respect, and love, and duty, loved his uncle most 
of the three. The father had no idle hours ; in the intervals, 
when he was not otherwise employed, one of his dear books 
usually lay open before him, and if he was not feeding upon 
the page, he was ruminating the food it had afforded him. 
But William Dove from the time that his nephew became 
capable of noticing and returning caresses seemed to have 
concentred upon him all his affections. With children, 
affection seldom fails of finding its due return ; and if he had 
not thus won the boy's heart in infancy, he would have 
secured it in childhood by winning his ear with these mar- 
vellous stories. But he possessed another talent which 
would alone have made him a favourite with children — the 
power of imitating animal sounds with singular perfection. 
A London manager would have paid him well for performing 
the cock in Hamlet. He could bray in octaves to a nicety, 
set the geese gabbling by addressing them in their own 
tongue, and make the turkey cock spread his fan, brush his 
wing against the ground, and angrily gob-gobble in answer 
to a gobble of defiance. But he prided himself more upon 
his success with the owls, as an accomplishment of more 
difficult attainment. In this Mr. Wordsworth's boy of 
Winander was not more perfect. Both hands were used as 
an instrument in producing the notes: and if Pope could 
have heard the responses which came from barn, and dod- 
dered oak, and ivied crag, he would rather (satirist as he 
was) have left Ralph unsatirised, than have vilified one of 
the wildest and sweetest of nocturnal sounds. 

He was not less expert to a human ear in hitting off the 
woodpigeon's note, though he could not in this instance pro- 
voke a reply. This sound he used to say ought to be natural 
to him, and it was wrong in the bird not to acknowledge his 
relation. Once when he had made too free with a lass's 
lips, he disarmed his brother of a reprehensive look, by plead- 
ing that as his name was William Dove it behooved him both 
to bill and to coo. 

* Donne. 



THE DOCTOR. 7b 



CHAPTER XI. P. I. 

A WORD TO THE READER, SHOWING WHERE WE ARE, AND HOW WE 
CAME HERE, AND WHEREFORE ; AND WHITHER WE ARE GOING. 

'Tis my venture 
On your retentive wisdom. 

Ben Jonson. 

Reader, you have not forgotten where we are at this time : 
you remember, I trust, that we are neither at Dan nor Beer- 
sheba ; nor anywhere between those two celebrated places • 
nor on the way to either of them : but that we are in the doc- 
tor's parlour, that Mrs. Dove has just poured out his seventh 
cup of tea, and that the clock of St. George's has struck five. 
In what street, parade, place, square, row, terrace, or lane, and 
in what town, and in what county; and on what day, and in 
what month, and in what year will be explained in due time. 
You cannot but remember what was said in the second chap- 
ter j^os^mzYiwrn concerning the importance and the necessity of 
order in an undertaking like this. " All things," says Sii 
Thomas Brown, " began in order ; so shall they end, and so 
shall they begin again ; according to the ordainer of order, 
and mystical mathematics of the city of Heaven :" This aw- 
ful sentence was uttered by the philosopher of Norwich upon 
occasion of a subject less momentous than that whereon we 
have entered, for what are the mysteries of the Quincunx 
compared to the delineation of a human mind ? Be pleased 
only at present to bear in mind where we are. Place but as 
much confidence in me as you do in your review, your news- 
paper, and your apothecary ; give me but as much credit as 
you expect from your tailor ; and if your apothecary deserves 
that confidence as well, it will be well for you, and if your 
credit is as punctually redeemed, it will be well for your tai- 
lor. It is not without cause that I have gone back to the 
doctor's childhood and his birthplace. Be thou assured, oh 
reader ! that he never could have been seated thus comfort- 
ably in that comfortable parlour where we are now regarding 
him — never by possibility could have been at that time in that 
spot, and in those circumstances — never could have been 
the doctor that he was — nay, according to all reasonable in- 
duction, all tangible or imaginable probabilities — never would 
have been a doctor at all — consequently thou never couldst 
have had the happiness of reading this delectable history, nor 
I the happiness of writing it for thy benefit, and information, 
and delight — had it not been for his father's character, his 
father's books, his schoolmaster Guy, and his Uncle William, 
4* 



76 THE DOCTOR. 

with all whom and which, it was therefore indispensable that 
thou shouldst be made acquainted. 

A metaphysician, or as some of my contemporaries would 
affect to say, a psychologist, if he were at all a master of his 
art bablative (for it is as much an ars bablativa as the law, 
which was defined to be so by that old traitor and time-ser- 
ver Sergeant Maynard) — a metaphysician I say, would not re- 
quire more than three such octavo volumes as those of Mr. 
Malthus's Essay on Population, to prove that no existing cir- 
cumstance could at this time be what it is unless all prece- 
ding circumstances had from the beginning of time been pre- 
cisely what they were. But, my good reader, I have too 
much respect for you, and too much regard for your precious 
time, and too much employment, or amusement (which is a 
very rational kind of employment) for my own, to waste it in 
demonstrating a truism. No man knows the value of time 
more feelingly than I do ! 

Man's life, sir, being 
So short, and then the way that leads unto 
The knowledge of ourselves, so long and tedious, 
Each minute should be precious.* 

It is my wish and intention to make you acquainted with a 
person most worthy to be known, for such the subject of this 
history will be admitted to be : one whom, when you once 
know him, it will be impossible that you should ever forget ; 
one for whom I have the highest veneration and regard ; and, 
though it is not possible that your feelings towards him should 
be what mine are, one who, the more he is known, will and 
must be more and more admired. I wish to introduce this 
person to you. Now, sir, I appeal to your good sense, and to 
your own standard of propriety, should I act with sufficient 
respect either to yourself or him, if, without giving you any 
previous intimation, any information, concerning his charac- 
ter and situation in life ; or in any way apprizing you who and 
what he was, I were to knock at your door and simply pre- 
sent him to you as Doctor Dove 1 No, my dear sir ! it is in- 
dispensable that you should be properly informed who it is 
whom I thus introduce to your acquaintance ; and if you are 
the judicious person that I suppose you to be, you will be 
obliged to me as long as you live. " For why," as old Hig- 
gins hath it — 

" For why, who writes such histories as these 
Doth often bring the reader's heart such ease 
As when they sit and see what he doth note, 
Well fare his heart, they say, this book that wrote !" 

Ill fare that reader's heart who of this book says other- 
wise ! " Tarn suavia dicamfacinora, ut male sit ei qui talibus 

* Beaumont and Fletcher. 



THE DOCTOR. 77 

non delectetur /" said a very different person from old Higgins, 
writing in a different vein, 1 have not read his book, but so far 
as my own is concerned, I heartily adopt his malediction. 

Had I been disposed, as the Persians say, to let the steed 
of the pen expatiate in the plains of prolixity, 1 should have 
carried thee farther back in the generations of the Doves. 
But the good garrulous son of Garcilasso my lord, (Heaven 
rest the soul of the princess who bore him — for Peru has 
never produced anything else half so precious as his delight- 
ful books,) the Inca-blooded historian himself, I say, was 
not more anxious to avoid that failing than I am. Forgive 
me, reader, if 1 should have fallen into an opposite error ; 
forgive me if, in the fear of saying too much, I should have 
said too little. I have my misgivings — I may have run upon 
Scylla while striving to avoid Charybdis. Much mteresting 
matter have I omitted ; much have I passed by on which I 
** cast a longing, lingering look behind ;" much which might 
worthily find a place in the history of Yorkshire — or of the 
West Riding, if that history were tripartitively distributed — 
or in the Gentleman's Magazine — or in John Nichol's Illus- 
trations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century : 
(I honour John Nichols, I honour Mr. Urban !) much more 
might it have had place — much more might it be looked for 
here. 

I might have told thee, reader, of Daniel the grandfather, 
and of Abigail his second wife, who once tasted tea in the 
housekeeper's apartments at Skipton Castle; and of the 
great-grandfather who at the age of twenty-eight died of the 
smallpox, and was the last of the family that wore a leathern 
jerkin ; and of his father Daniel the atavus, who was the first 
of the family that shaved, and who went with his own horse 
and arms to serve in that brave troop, which during the wreck 
of the king's party the heir of Lowther raised for the loyal 
cause : and of that Daniel's grandfather (the tritavus) who 
going to Kentmere to bring home a wife, was converted from 
the popish superstition by falling in with Bernard Gilpin on 
the way. That apostolic man was so well pleased with his 
convert, that he gave him his own copy of Latimer's ser- 
mons — that copy which was one of our Daniel's Sunday 
books, and which was religiously preserved in reverence for 
this ancestor, and for the apostle of the North (as Bernard 
Gilpin was called) whose autograph it contained. 

The history of any private family, however humble, could 
it be fully related for five or six generations, would illustrate 
the state and progress of society better than could be done 
by the most elaborate dissertation. And the history of the 
Doves might be rendered as interesting and as instructive 
as that of the Seymours or the Howards. Frown not, my 
Lord of Norfolk, frown not, your grace of Somerset, when I 
add, that it would contain less for their descendants to regret. 



78 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER XII. P. I. 

A HISTORY NOTICED WHICH IS WRITTEN BACKWARD — THE CON- 
FUSION OF TONGUES AN ESPECIAL EVIL FOR SCHOOLBOYS. 

For never in the long and tedious tract 
Of slavish grammar vpas I made to plod ; 

No tyranny of Rules my patience rackt ; 
1 served no prenticehood to any Rod ; 

But in the freedom of the Practic way 

Learnt to go right, even when I went astray. 

Dr. Beaumont. 

It has been the general practice of historians, from the 
time of Moses, to begin at the begimiing of their subject : 
but as a river may be traced either from its sources or its 
mouth, so it appears that a history may be composed in the 
reversed order of its chronology ; and a French author of 
very considerable ability and great learning has actually 
written a history of the Christian religion from his own time 
upward. It forms part of an elaborate and extensive work 
entitled Parallele des Religions, which must have been better 
known than it appears to be at present if it had not happened 
to be published in Paris during the most turbulent year of 
the revolution. Perhaps if I had carried back the memoirs 
of the Dove family, I might have followed his example in 
choosing the up-hill way, and have proceeded from son to 
father in the ascending line. But having resolved (whether 
judiciously or not) not to go farther back in these family 
records than the year of our Lord 1723, being the year of the 
doctor's birth, I shall continue in the usual course, and pur- 
sue his history ah incunahulis down to that important evening 
on which we find him now reaching out his hand to take that 
cup of tea which Mrs. Dove has just creamed and sugared 
for him. After all the beaten way is usually the best, and 
always the safest. "He ought to be well mounted," says 
Aaron Hill, " who is for leaping the hedges of custom." For 
myself I am not so adventurous a horseman as to take the 
hazards of a steeple chase. 

Proceeding, therefore, after the model of a Tyburn bio- 
graphy — which, being an ancient as well as popular form, is 
likely to be the best — we come after birth and parentage 
to education. " That the world from Babel was scattered 
into divers tongues, we need not other proof," says a grave and 
good author, " than as Diogenes proved that there is motion — 
by walking, so we may see the confusion of languages by our 



THE DOCTOR. 79 

confused speaking. Once all the earth was of one tongue, 
one speech, and one consent ; for they all spake in the holy 
tongue wherein the world was created in the beginning. But 
•pro peccato dissentionis humanw, as saith St. Austin — for the 
sin of men's disagreeing, not only different dispositions, but 
also different languages came into the world. They came 
to Babel with a disagreeing agreement ; and they came away 
punished with a speechless speech. They disagree among 
themselves, while every one strives for dominion. They 
agree against God in their JVagnavad Ian Liguda — we will 
make ourselves a rendezvous for idolatry. But they come 
away speaking to each other, but not understood of each 
other ; and so speak to no more purpose than if they spake 
not at all. This punishment of theirs at Babel is like Adam's 
corruption, hereditary to us ; for we never come under the 
rod at the grammar school, but we smart for our ancestor's 
rebellion at Babel." 

Light lie the earth upon the bones of Richard Guy, the 
schoolmaster of Ingleton ! He never consumed birch enough 
in his vocation to have made a besom ; and his ferula was 
never applied unless when some moral offence called for a 
chastisement that would be felt. There is a closer connec- 
tion between good nature and good sense than is commonly 
supposed. A sour, ill-tempered pedagogue would have driven 
Daniel through the briers and brambles of the grammar and 
foundered him in its sloughs ; Guy led him gently along the 
greensward. He felt that childhood should not be made 
altogether a season of painful acquisition, and that the fruits 
of the sacrifices then made are uncertain as to the account 
to which they may be turned, and are also liable to the con- 
tingencies of life at least, if not otherwise jeopardized. 
" Puisque le jour pent lui manquer, laissons le un peu jouir de 
VAuroreT The precept which warmth of imagination in- 
spired in Jean Jacques was impressed upon Guy's practice 
by gentleness of heart. He never crammed the memory of 
his pupil with such horrific terms as prothesis, aphaeresis, 
epenthesis, syncope, paragoge, and apocope ; never ques- 
tioned him concerning appositio, evocatio, syllepsis, prolep- 
sis, zeugma, synthesis, antiptosis, and synecdoche ; never 
attempted to deter him (as Lily says boys are above all things 
to be deterred) from those faults which Lily also says, seem 
almost natural to the English — the heinous faults of iota- 
cism, lambdacism, (which Alcibiades effected,) ischnotesism, 
trauli'sm, and plateasm. But having grounded him well in 
the nouns and verbs, and made him understand the concords, 
he then followed in part the excellent advice of Lily thus 
given in his address to the reader : — 

" When these concords be well known unto them, (an easy 
and pleasant pain, if the foregrounds be well and thoroughly 
beaten in,) let them not continue in learning of the rules 



80 



THE DOCTOR. 



orderly, as they lie in their syntax, but rather learn some 
pretty book, wherein is contained not only the eloquence of 
the tongue, but also a good plain lesson of honesty and god- 
liness ; and thereof take some little sentence as it lieth, and 
learn to make the same first out of English into Latin, not 
seeing the book, or construing it thereupon. And if there 
fall any necessary rule of the syntax to be known, then to 
learn it, as the occasion of the sentence giveth cause that 
day; which sentence once made well, and as nigh as may 
be with the words of the book, then to take the book and 
construe it ; and so shall he be less troubled with the parsing 
of it, and easiliest carry his lesson in mind." 

Guy followed this ad\ace in part, and in part he deviated 
from it, upon Lily's own authority, as "judging that the most 
sufficient way which he saw to be the readiest mean ;" while, 
therefore, he exercised his pupil in writing Latin pursuant to 
this plan, he carried him on faster in construing, and pro- 
moted the boy's progress b)" gratifying his desire of getting 
forward. When he had done with Cordery, Erasmus was 
taken up ; for some of Erasmus's colloquies were in those 
days used as a school book, and the most attractive one that 
could be put into a boy's hands. After he had got through 
this, the aid of an English version was laid aside. And here 
Guy departed from the ordinary course, not upon any notion 
that he could improve upon it, but merely because he hap- 
pened to possess an old book composed for the use of schools, 
which was easy enough to suit young Daniel's progress in 
the language, and might, therefore; save the cost of purchas- 
ing Justin, or Phaedrus, or Cornelius Nepos, or Eutropius 
— to one or other of which he would otherwise have been 
introduced. 



CHAPTER XIIL P. L 

A DOUBT CONCERNING SCHOOL BOOKS, WHICH WILL BE DEEMED 
HERETICAL ; AND SOME ACCOUNT OF AN EXTRAORDINARY SUB- 
STITUTE FOR OVID OR VIRGIL. 

They say it is an ill mason that refuseth any stone ; and there is no 
knowledge but in a skilful hand serves, either positively as it is, or else to 
illustrate some other knowledge. — HerberCs Remains. 

I AM sometimes inclined to think that pigs are brought up 
upon a wiser system than boys at a grammar school. The 
pig is allowed to feed upon any kind of offal, however coarse. 



THE DOCTOR. 81 

on which he can thrive, till the time approaches when pig is 
to commence pork, or take a degree as bacon, and then he 
is fed daintily. Now it has sometimes appeared to me, that, 
in like manner, boys might acquire their first knowledge of 
Latin from authors very inferior to those which are now used 
in all schools ; provided the matter was unexceptionable and 
the Latinity good ; and that they should not be introduced to 
the standard works of antiquity till they are of an age in 
some degree to appreciate what they read. 

Understand me, reader, as speaking doubtfully — and that, 
too, upon a matter of little moment ; for the scholar will 
return in riper years to those authors which are worthy of 
being studied ; and as for the blockhead, it signifies nothing 
whether the book which he consumes by thumbing it in the 
middle and dog-earing it at the corners, be worthy or not of 
a better use. Yet if the dead have any cognizance of post- 
humous fame, one would think it must abate somewhat of 
the pleasure with which Virgil and Ovid regard their earthly 
immortality, when they see to what base purposes their pro- 
ductions are applied. That their verses should be adminis- 
tered to boys in regular doses, as lessons or impositions, and 
some dim conception of their meaning whipped into the tail 
when it has failed to penetrate the head, cannot be just the 
sort of homage to their genius which they anticipated or 
desired. 

Not from any reasonings or refinements of this kind, but 
from the mere accident of possessing the book, Guy put into 
his pupil's hands the Dialogues of Johannes Ravisius Textor. 
Jean Tixier, Seigneur de Ravisy, in the Nivernois, who thus 
Latinized his name, is a person whose works, according to 
Baillet's severe censure, were buried in the dust of a few 
petty colleges and unfrequented shops, more than a century 
ago. He was, however, in his day, a person of no mean 
station in the world of letters, having been rector of the uni- 
versity of Paris, at the commencement of the sixteenth cen- 
tury ; and few, indeed, are the writers whose books have 
been so much used ; for perhaps no other author ever con- 
tributed so largely to the manufacture of exercises, whether 
in prose or verse, and of sermons also. Textor may be con- 
sidered as the first compiler of the Gradus ad Parnasswn ; 
and that collection of apothegms was originally formed by 
him, which Conrade Lycosthenes enlarged and rearranged ; 
which the Jesuits adopted after expurgating it ; and which, 
during many generations, served as one of the standard com- 
monplace books for commonplace divines in this country as 
well as on the Continent. 

But though Textor was continually working in classical 
literature with a patience and perseverance which nothing 
but the delight he experienced in such occupations could have 



82 THE DOCTOR. 

sustained, he was without a particle of classical taste. His 
taste was that of the age wherein he flourished, and these 
his dialogues are moralities in Latin verse. The designs and 
thoughts, which would have accorded with their language had 
they been written either m old French or old English, appear, 
when presented in Latinity, which is always that of a scholar, 
and largely interwoven with scraps from familiar classics, as 
strange as Harlequin and Pantaloon would do in heroic cos- 
tume. 

Earth opens the first of these curious compositions with a 
bitter complaint for the misfortunes which it is her lot to wit- 
ness. Age {^tas) overhears the lamentation, and inquires 
the cause ; and after a dialogue, in which the author makes 
the most liberal use of his own commonplaces, it appears 
that the perishable nature of all sublunary things is the cause 
of this mourning, ^tas endeavours to persuade Terra that 
her grief is altogether unreasonable by such brief and cogent 
observations as Fatajubeni, Fata volunt, Ita Diis placitum. 
Earth asks the name of her philosophic consoler, but upon 
discovering it, calls hei/alsa virago, and meretrix, and abuses 
her as being the very author of all the evils that distress her. 
However, ^tas succeeds in talking Terra into better humour, 
advises her to exhort man that he should not set his heart 
upon perishable things, and takes her leave as Homo enters. 
After a recognition between mother and son, Terra proceeds 
to warn Homo against all the ordinary pursuits of this world. 
To convince him of the vanity of glory she calls up in suc- 
cession the ghosts of Hector, Achilles, Alexander, and Sam- 
son, who tell their tales and admonish him that valour and 
renown afford no protection against Death. To exemplify 
the vanity of beauty, Helen, Lais, Thisbe, and Lucretia are 
summoned, relate in like manner their respective fortunes, 
and remind him th^ii pulvis et umbra smnus. Virgil preaches to 
him upon the emptiness of literary fame. Xerxes tells him 
that there is no avail in power, Nero that there is none in 
tyranny, Sardanapalus that there is none in voluptuousness. 
But the application which Homo makes of all this, is the 
very reverse to what his mother intended : he infers that 
seeing he must die at last, live how he will, the best thing 
he can do is to make a merry life of it, so away he goes to 
dance and revel, and enjoy himself: and Terra concludes 
with the mournful observation that men will still pursue 
their bane, unmindful of their latter end. 

Another of these moralities begins with three worldlings 
[tres mundani) ringing changes upon the pleasures of profli- 
gacy, in Textor's peculiar manner, each in regular succes- 
sion saying something to the same purport in different words. 
As thus ; — 



THE DOCTOR. 83 

Primus Mundanus. 

Si breve tempus abit, 

Secundus Mundanus, 

Si vita caduca recedit, 

Tertius Mundanus. 

Si cadit hora. 
Primus Mundanus. 

Dies abeunt, 

Secundus Mundanus. 

Perit Omne, 

Tertius Mundanus. 

Venit Mors, 
Primus Mundanus. 

Quidnam prodesset fati meminisse futuri ? 
Secundus Mundanus, 

Quidnam prodesset lachrymis consumere vitam ? 
Tertius Mundanus. 

Quidnam prodesset tantis incumbere curis ? 

Upon which an unpleasant personage, who has just appeared 
to interrupt their trialogue, observes — 

" Si breve tempus abit, si vita caduca recedit. 
Si cadit hora, dies abeunt, perit Omne, venit Mors, 
Quidnam lethiferae Mortis meminisse nocebit ?" 

It is Mors herself who asks the question. The three 
worldlings, however, behave as resolutely as Don Juan in the 
old drama; they tell Death that they are young, and rich, 
and active, and vigorous, and set all admonition at defiance. 
Death, or rather Mrs. Death, (for Mors being feminine is 
called lana, and meretrix, and virago,) takes all this patiently, 
and letting them go off in a dance, calls up Human Nature, 
who has been asleep meantime, and asks her how she can 
sleep in peace while her sons are leading a life of dissipation 
and debauchery. Nature very coolly replies by demanding 
why they should not: and Death answers, because they 
must go to the infernal regions for so doing. Upon this 
Nature, who appears to be liberally inclined, asks if it is 
credible that any should be obliged to go there : and Death, 
to convince her, calls up a soul from bale to give an account 
of his own sufferings. A dreadful account this Damnatus 
gives ; and when Nature, shocked at what she hears, inquires 
if he is the only one who is tormented in Orcus, Damnatus 
assures her that hardly one in a thousand goes to heaven, 
but that his fellow sufferers are in number numberless ; and 
he specifies among them kings and popes, and senators and 
severe schoolmasters — a class of men whom Textor seems 
to have held in great and proper abhorrence — as if, like poor 
Thomas Tusser, he had suffered under their inhuman dis- 
ciphne. 

Horrified at this, Nature asks advice of Mors, and Mon 
advises her to send a son of Thunder round the world, who 
should reprove the nations for their sins, and sow the seeds 



84 THE DOCTOR. 

of virtue by his preaching. Peregrinus goes upon this mis- 
sion, and returns to give an account of it. Nothing can be 
worse than the report. As for the kings of the earth, it 
would be dangerous, he says, to say what they were doing. 
The popes suffered the sliip of Peter to go wherever the 
winds carried it. Senators were won by intercession, or 
corrupted by gold. Doctors spread their nets in the temples 
for prey, and lawyers were dumb unless their tongues were 
loosened by money. Had he seen the Italians ? — Italy was 
full of dissensions, ripe for war, and defiled by its own infa- 
mous vice. The Spaniards ] — They were suckled by Pride 
The English ?— 

" Gens tacitis praBgnans arcanis, ardua ten tans, 
Edita tartareis rriihi creditur esse tenebris." 

In short, the missionary concludes that he has found every- 
where an abundant crop of vices, and that all his endeavours 
to produce amendment have been like ploughing the seashore. 
Again aiflicted Nature asks advice of Mors, and Mors recom- 
mends that she should call up Justice, and send her abroad 
with her scourge to repress the wicked. But Justice is 
found to be so fast asleep that no calling can awaken her. 
Mors then advises her to summon Veritas — alas ! unhappy 
Veritas enters complaining of pains from head to foot, and 
in all the intermediate parts, within and without; she is 
dying, and entreats that Nature will call some one to con- 
fess her. But who shall be applied to ? Kings ? — They 
will not come. Nobles ? — Veritas is a hateful personage to 
them. Bishops, or mitred abbots ? — They have no regard 
for Truth. Some samt from the desert ? — Nature knows not 
where to find one ! Poor Veritas therefore dies " unhouseled, 
disappointed, unannealed ;" and forthwith three demons enter 
rejoicing that Human Nature is left with none to help her, 
and that they are kings of this world. They call in their 
ministers, Caro, and Voluptas, and Vitium, and send them to 
their work among mankind. These successful missionaries 
return, and relate how well they have sped everywhere ; and 
the demons being by this time hungry, after washing in due 
form, and many ceremonious compliments among them- 
selves, sit down to a repast which their ministers have pro- 
vided. The bill of fare was one which Beelzebub's court of 
aldermen might have approved. There were the brains of a 
fat monk — a roasted doctor of divinity who afforded great 
satisfaction — a king's sirloin — some broiled pope's flesh, and 
part of a schoolmaster ; the joint is not specified, but I sup- 
pose it to have been the rump. Then came a senator's lights 
and a lawyer's tongue. 

When they have eaten of these dainties till the distended 
stomach can hold no more, Virtus comes in, and seeing them 
5end off the fragments to their Tartarean den, calls upon man- 



THE DOCTOR. 85 

kind to bestow some sustenance upon her, for she is tor- 
mented with hunger. The demons and their ministers in- 
sult her and drive her into banishment ; they tell Nature that 
to-morrow the great King of Orcus will come and carry her 
away in chains ; off they go in a dance, and Nature con- 
cludes the piece by saying that what they have threatened 
must happen, unless Justice shall be awakened, Virtue fed, 
and Veritas restored to life by the sacred book. 

There are several other dialogues in a similar strain of 
fiction. The rudest and perhaps oldest specimen of this 
style is to be found in Pierce Ploughman, the most polished 
in Calderon, the most popular in John Bunyan's Holy War, 
and above all in his Pilgrim's Progress. It appears from 
the dialogues that they were not composed for the use of 
youth alone as a school book, but were represented at col- 
lege ; and poor as they are in point of composition, the oddity 
of their combinations, and the wholesome honesty of their 
satire, were well adapted to strike young imaginations, and 
make an impression there which better and wiser works 
might have failed to leave. 

A schoolmaster who had been regularly bred would have 
regarded such a book with scorn, and discerning at once its 
obvious faults, would have been incapable of perceiving any- 
thing which might compensate for them. But Guy was not 
educated well enough to despise a writer like old Textor. 
What he knew himself, he had picked up where and how he 
could, in byways and corners. The book was neither in any 
respect above his comprehension, nor below his taste ; and 
Joseph Warton never rolled off the hexameters of Virgil or 
Homer, ore rotundo, with more delight, when expatiating 
with all the feelings of a scholar and a poet upon their 
beauties, to such pupils as Headly, and Russell, and Bowles, 
than Guy paraphrased these rude but striking allegories to 
his delighted Daniel. 



CHAPTER XIV. P. I. 

AN OBJECTION ANSWERED. 

Is this then your wonder? 
Nay then you shall under- 
stand more of my skill. 

Ben Jonson. 

"This account of Textor's Dialogues," says a critical 
reader, " might have done very well for the Retrospective 
Review, or one of the magazines, or D'Israeli's Curiosities 



86 THE DOCTOR. 

of Literature. But no one would have looked for it here, 
where it is completely out of place." 

"My good sir, there is quite enough left untouched in 
Textor to form a very amusing paper for the journal which 
you have mentioned, and the editor may thank you for the 
hint. But you are mistaken in thinking that what has been 
said of those dialogues is out of place here. May I ask what 
you expected in these volumes ?" 

" What the title authorized me to look for." 

" Do you know, sir, what mutton broth means at a city 
breakfast on the lord mayor's day, mutton broth being the 
appointed breakfast for that festival 1 It means, according 
to established usage — by liberal interpretation — mutton broth 
and everything else that can be wished for at a breakfast. 
So, sir, you have here not only what the title seems to 
specify, but everything else that can be wished for in a book. 
In treating of the doctor, it treats de omnibus rebus et quihus- 
dam aliis. It is the doctor, &c. ; and that &c., like one of 
Lyttleton's, impUes everything that can be deduced from the 
words preceding. 

" But I maintain that the little which has been said of com- 
ical old Textor (for it is little compared to what his dialogues 
contain) strictly relates to the main thread of this most or- 
derly and well compacted work. You will remember that I 
am now replying to the question proposed in the third chapter 
P. I., ' Who was the doctor V And as he who should un- 
dertake to edit the works of Chaucer, or Spenser, or Shak- 
speare, would not be qualified for the task unless he had 
made himself conversant with the writings of those earlier 
authors, from whose storehouses (as far as they drew from 
books) their minds were fed, so it behooved me (as far as 
my information and poor ability extend) to explain in what 
manner so rare a character as Dr. Dove's was formed. 

" Quo seme! est imbuia recens — you know the rest of the quo- 
tation, sir. And perhaps you may have tasted water out of 
a beery glass — which it is not one or two rinsings that can 
purify. 

" You have seen yew trees cut into the forms of pyramids, 
chess kings, and peacocks: nothing can be more unlike 
their proper growth — and yet no tree except the yew could 
take the artificial figure so well. The garden passes into 
the possession of some new owner who has no taste for such 
ornaments : the yews are left to grow at their own will ; 
they lose the preposterous shape which had been forced 
upon them, without recovering that of their natural growth, 
and what was formal becomes grotesque — a word which may 
be understood as expressing the incongruous combination of 
formality with extravagance or wildness." 

The intellectual education which young Daniel received at 
home was as much out of the ordinary course as the book 



THE DOCTOR. 



87 



in which he studied at school. Robinson Crusoe had not yet 
reached Ingleton. Sandford and Merton had not been writ- 
ten, nor the history of Pecksey and Flapsey and the Robin's 
Nest, which is the prettiest fiction that ever was composed 
for children, and for which its excellent authoress will one 
day rank high among women of genius when time shall have 
set its seal upon desert. The only book within his reach, of 
all those which now come into the hands of youth, was the 
Pilgrim's Progress, and this he read at first without a suspi- 
cion of its allegorical import. What he did not understand 
was as little remembered as the sounds of the wind, or the 
motions of the passing clouds; but the imagery and the inci- 
dents took possession of his memory and his heart. After a 
while Textor became an interpreter of the immortal Tinker, 
and the boy acquired as much of the meaning by glimpses 
as was desirable, enough to render some of the personages 
more awful by spiritualizing them, while the tale itself re- 
mained as a reality. Oh ! what blockheads are those wise 
persons who think it necessary that a child should com- 
prehend everything it reads ! 



CHAPTER XV. P. I. 

THE AUTHOR VENTURES AN OPINION AGAINST THE PREVAILING 
WISDOM OF MAKING CHILDREN PREMATURELY WISE. 

Pray you, use your freedom ; 
And so far, if you please, allow me mine, 
To hear you only ; not to be compelled 
To take your moral potions. 

Massinoer. 

" What, sir," exclaims a lady, who is bluer than ever one 
of her naked and woad-stained ancestors appeared at a public 
festival in full die — " what, sir, do you tell us that children 
are not to be made to understand what they are taught ?" 
And she casts her eyes complacently towards an assortment 
of those books which so many writers, male and female, 
some of the infidel, some of the semi-fidel, and some of the 
super-fidel schools have composed for the laudable purpose 
of enabling children to understand everything. " What, sir," 
she repeats, " are we to make our children learn things by 
rote like parrots, and fill their heads with words to which 
they cannot attach any signification V 

" Yes, madam, in very many cases." 

'*I should like, sir, to be instructed why." 

She says this in a tone, and with an expression both of 



88 THE DOCTOR. 

eyes and lips which plainly show, in direct opposition to the 
words, that the lady thinks herself much fitter to instruct 
than to be instructed. It is not her fault. She is a good 
woman, and naturally a sensible one, but she has been 
trained up in the way women should not go. She has been 
carried from lecture to lecture, like a student who is being 
crammed at a Scotch university. She has attended lectures 
on chymistry, lectures on poetry, lectures on phrenology, 
lectures on mnemonics ; she has read the latest and most 
applauded essays on taste ; she has studied the newest and 
most approved treatises, practical and theoretical, upon edu- 
cation ;, she has paid sufficient attention to metaphysics to 
know as much as a professed philosopher about matter and 
spirit ; she is a proficient in political economy, and can dis- 
course upon the new science of population. Poor lady, it 
would require large draughts of Lethe to clear out all this 
indigested and indigestible trash, and fit her for becoming 
what she might have been ! Upon this point, however, it 
may be practicable to set her right. 

" You are a mother, madam, and a good one. In caress- 
ing your infants you may perhaps think it unphilosophical 
to use what I should call the proper and natural language of 
the nursery. But doubtless you talk to them ; you give 
some utterance to your feelings ; and whether that utterance 
be in legitimate and wise words, or in good extemporaneous 
nonsense, it is alike to the child. The conventional words 
convey no more meaning to him than the mere sound ; but 
he understands from either all that is meant, all that you wish 
him to understand, all that is to be understood. He knows 
that it is an expression of your love and tenderness, and that 
he is the object of it. 

" So, too, it continues after he is advanced from infancy 
into childhood. When children are beginning to speak they 
do not and cannot affix any meaning to half the words which 
they hear; yet they learn their mother tongue. What I 
say is, do not attempt to force their intellectual growth. Do 
not feed them with meat till they have teeth to masticate it. 
"There is a great deal which they ought to learn, can 
learn, and must learn, before they can or ought to understand 
it. How many questions must you have heard from them 
which you have felt to be best answered when they were 
with most dexterity put aside ! Let me tell you a story which 
the Jesuit Manuel de Vergara used to tell of himself. When 
he was a little boy, he asked a Dominican friar what was the 
meaning of the seventh commandment, for he said he could 
not tell what committing adultery was. The friar, not know- 
ing how to answer, cast a perplexed look round the room, 
and thinking he had found a safe reply, pointed to a kettle 
on the fire, and said the commandment meant that he must 
never put his hand in the pot while it was boiling. The very 



THE DOCTOR. 89 

next day, a loud scream alarmed the family, and behold 
there was little Manuel running about the room, holding up 
his scalded finger, and exclaiming, ' Oh dear ! oh dear ! I've 
committed adultery! I've committed adultery! I've com- 
mitted adultery I' " 



CHAPTER XVI. P. I. 

USE AND ABUSE OP STORIES IN REASONING, WITH A WORD IN 
BEHALF OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS, AND IN REPROOF OF THE EARL 
OF LAUDERDALE. 

My particular inclination moves me in controversy especially to approve 
his choice that said, Fortia mallem quam formosa. — Dr. Jackson. 

I ENDED that last chapter with a story, and though " I say 
it who should not say it," it is a good story well applied. 
Of what use a story may be even in the most serious debates, 
may be seen from the circulation of old Joes in parliament, 
which are as current there as their sterling namesakes used 
to be in the city some three score years ago. A jest, though 
it should be as stale as last week's newspaper, and as flat as 
Lord Flounder's face, is sure to be received with laughter 
by the collective wisdom of the nation ; nay, it is sometimes 
thrown out like a tub to the whale, or like a trail of carrion 
to draw off hounds from the scent. 

The bill which should have put an end to the inhuman 
practice of employing children to sweep chimneys was 
thrown out on the third reading in the House of Lords (having 
passed the Commons without a dissentient voice) by a speech 
from Lord Lauderdale, the force of which consisted in, liter- 
ally, a Joe Miller jest. He related that an Irishman used to 
sweep his chimney by letting a rope down, which was fast- 
ened round the legs of a goose, and then pulling the goose 
after it. A neighbour to whom he recommended this as a 
convenient mode, objected to it upon the score of cruelty to 
the goose, upon which he replied that a couple of ducks 
might do as well. Now, if the bill before the house had 
been to enact that men should no longer sweep chimneys, 
but that boys should be used instead, the story would have 
been applicable. It was no otherwise applicable than as it 
related to chimney-sweeping ; but it was a joke, and that 
sufficed. The lords laughed ; his lordship had the satisfac- 
tion of throwing out the bill, and the home negro trade has 
continued from that time, now seven years, till this day, and 
still continues. His lordship had his jest ; and it is speak- 



90 THE DOCTOR. 

ing within compass to say, that in the course of tliose seven 
years two thousand children have been sacrificed in conse- 
quence. 

The worst actions of Lord Lauderdale's worst ancestor 
admit of a belter defence before God and man. 

Had his lordship perused the evidence which had been laid 
before the House of Commons when the bill was brought in, 
upon which evidence the bill was founded 1 Was he aware 
of the shocking barbarities connected with the trade, and 
inseparable from it ? Did he know that children inevitably 
lacerate themselves in learning this dreadful occupation? 
that they are frequently crippled by it? frequently lose 
their lives in it by suffocation, or by slow fire % that it iuduces 
a peculiar and dreadful disease ? that they who survive the 
accumulated hardships of a childhood during which they are 
exposed to every kind of misery, and destitute of every kind 
of comfort, have at the age of seventeen or eighteen to seek 
their living how they can in some other employment, for it is 
only by children that this can be carried on ? Did his lord- 
ship know that girls as well as boys are thus abused ? that 
their sufferings begin at the age of six, sometimes a year 
earlier 1 finally, that they are sold to this worst and most in- 
human of slaveries, and sometimes stolen for the purpose of 
being sold to it] 

I bear no ill-will towards Lord Lauderdale, either person- 
ally or politically : far from it. His manly and honourable 
conduct on the queen's trial, when there was such a... utter 
destitution of honour in many quarters where it was believed 
to exist, and so fearful a want of manliness where it ought 
to have been found, entitles him to the respect and gratitude 
of every true Briton. But I will tell his lordship that rather 
than have spoken as he did against an act which would have 
lessened the sum of wickedness and suffering in this coun- 
try — rather than have treated a question of pure humanity 
with contempt and ridicule — rather than have employed ray 
tongue for such a purpose, and with such success, I would — 
but no : I will not tell him how I had concluded. I will not 
tell him what I had added in the sincerity of a free tongue and 
an honest heart. I leave the sentence imperfect rather than 
that any irritation which the strength of my language might 
excite should lessen the salutary effects of self-condem- 
nation. 

James Montgomery ! these remarks are too late for a 
place in thy Chimney-sweepers' Friend : but insert them, I 
pray thee, in thy newspaper, at the request of one who ad- 
mires and loves thee as a poet, honours and respects thee as 
a man, and reaches out in spirit at this moment a long arm 
to shake hands with thee in cordial good- will. 

My compliments to you, Mr. Bowring ! Your little poem 
in Montgomery's benevolent album is in a strain of true 



THE DOCTOR. 91 

poetry and right feeling. None but a man of genius could 
have struck off such stanzas upon such a theme. But when 
you wrote upon humanity at home, the useful reflection 
might have occurred that patriotism has no business abroad. 
Whatever cause there may be to wisli for amendment in the 
government and institutions of other countries, keep aloof 
from all revolutionary schemes for amending them, lest you 
should experience a far more painful disappointment in their 
success than in their failure. No spirit of prophecy is re- 
quired for telling you that this must be the result. Lay not 
up that cause of remorse for yourself, and time will ripen in 
you what is crude, confirm what is right, and gently rectify 
all that is erroneous : it will abate your political hopes, and 
enlarge your religious faith, and stablish both upon a sure 
foundation. My good wishes and sincere respects to you, 
Mr. Bowring! 



INTERCHAPTER II. 



ABALLIBOOZOBANGANORRIBO. 



lo'l dico dunque e dicol che ognun m'ode. 

Benedetto Vaechi. 

Whether the secret of the freemasons be comprised in the 
mystic word above is more than I think proper to reveal at 
present. But I have broken no vow in uttering it. 

And I am the better for having uttered it. 

Mohammed begins some of ihe chapters of the Koran with 
certain letters of unknown signification; and the commenta- 
tors say that the meaning of these initials ought not to be in- 
quired. So Gelaleddin says; so sayeth Taleb. And they 
say truly. Some begin with A. L. M. ; some with K. H. I. 
A. S. ; some with T. H. ; T. S. M. ; T. S. or I. S. ; others 
with K. M. ; H. M. A. S. K. ; N. M. ; a single Kaf, a single 
Nun, or a single Sad — and sad work would it be either for 
Kaff'er or Mussulman to search for meaning where none is. 
Gelaleddin piously remarks that there is only One who 
knoweth the import of these letters : I reverence the name 
which he uses too much to employ it upon this occasion. 
Mohammed himself tells us that they are the signs of the 
book which teacheth the true doctrine ; the book of the wise ; 
the book of evidence ; the book of instruction. When he 
speaketh thus of the Koran, he lieth, hke an impostor as he 
is : but what he has said falsely of that false book may be ap- 
plied truly to this. It is the book of mstruction inasmuch as 
every individual reader, among the thousands and tens of 
5 



92 THE DOCTOR. 

thousands who peruse it, will find something in it which he 
did not know before. It is the book of evidence, because of 
its internal truth. It is the book of the wise, because the 
wiser a man is the more he will delight therein ; yea, the 
delight which he shall take in it will be the measure of his 
intellectual capacity. And that it teacheth the true doctrine 
is plain from this circumstance ; that I defy the British Critic, 
the Antijacobin, the Quarterly and the Eclectic Reviews — 
ay, and the Evangelical, the Methodist, the Baptist, and the 
Orthodox Churchman's Magazine, with the Christian Ob- 
server to boot, to detect any one heresy in it. Therefore, I 
say again — 

Aballiboozobanganorribo ; 

and, like Mohammed, I say that it is the sign of the book — 
and therefore it is that I have said it : 

Nondimen ne' la lingua degli Hebrei 
INe la Latina, ne la Greca antica, 
Ne' quella forse ancor degli Aramei.* 

Happen it may — for things no less strange have happened ; 
and what has been may be again — for may be and has been 
are only tenses of the same verb, and that verb is eternally 
being declined— happen, I say, it may — and, peradventure, 
if it may it must, and certainly if it must it will : but, what 
with indicatives and subjunctives, presents, preterperfects, 
and paulo-postfutura, the parenthesis is becoming too long 
for the sentence, and I must begin it again. A prudent 
author should never exact too much from the breath or the 
attention of his reader — to say nothing of the brains. 

Happen then it may that this book may outhve Lord Cas- 
tlereagh's peace, Mr. Pitt's reputation, (we will throw Mr. 
Fox's into the bargain,) Mr. Locke's metaphysics, and the 
regent's bridge in St. James's Park. It may outlive the elo- 
quence of Burke, the discoveries of Davy, the poems of 
Wordsworth, and the victories of Wellington. It may out- 
live the language in which it is written; and, in Heaven 
knows what year of Heaven knows what era, be discovered 
by some learned inhabitant of that continent which the in- 
sects that make coral and madrepore are now, and from the 
beginning of the world have been, fabricating in the Pacific 
Ocean. It may be dug up among the ruins of London, and 
considered as one of the sacred books of the sacred island of 
the west ; for I cannot but hope that some reverence will 
always be attached to this most glorious and most happy 
island when its power, and happiness, and glory, like those 
of Greece, shall have passed away. It may be deciphered 
and interpreted, and give occasion to a new religion called 

* Molza. 



THE DOCTOR. 93 

Dovery, or Danielism ; which may have its chapels, churches, 
cathedrals, abbeys, priories, monasteries, numieries, semina- 
ries, colleges, and universities ; its synods, consistories, con- 
vocations, and councils ; its acolytes, sacristans, deacons, 
priests, archdeacons, rural deans, chancellors, prebends, 
canons, deans, bishops, archbishops, prince bishops, primates, 
patriarchs, cardinals, and popes; its most Catholic kings, and 
its kings most Dovish, or most Danielish. It may have com- 
mentators and expounders, (who can doubt that it will have 
them ]) who will leave unenlightened that which is dark, and 
darken that which is clear. Various interpretations will be 
given, and be followed by as many sects. Schisms must 
ensue ; and the tragedies, comedies, and farces, with all the 
varieties of tragi-comedy, and tragi-farce, or farcico- tragedy, 
which have been represented in this old world, be enacted in 
that younger one. Attack on the one side, defence on the 
other; high Dovers and low Dovers; Danielites of a thou- 
sand unimagined and unimaginable denominations ; schisms, 
heresies, seditions, persecutions, wars — the dismal game of 
puss-catch-corner played by a nation instead of a family of 
children, and in dreadful earnest, when power, property, and 
life are to be won and lost ! 

But without looking so far into the future history of 
Dovery, let me exhort the learned Australian to whom the 
honour is reserved of imparting this treasure to his country- 
men, that he abstain from all attempts at discovering the 
mysteries of Aballiboozobanganorribo! The unapocalyptic- 
al arcana of that stupendous vocable are beyond his reach ; 
so let him rest assured. Let him not plunge into the fathom- 
less depths of that great world, let him not attempt to soar to 
its unapproachable heights. Perhaps — and surely no man 
of judgment will suppose that 1 utter anything lightly — 
perhaps, if the object were attainable, he might have cause to 
repent its attainment. If too " little learning be a dangerous 
thing," too much is more so ; 

II saper troppo qualche volta nuoce.* 

" Curiosity," says Fuller, " is a kernel of the forbidden 
fruit, which still sticketh in the throat of a natural man, 
sometimes to the danger of his choking." 

There is a knowledge which is forbidden because it is 
dangerous. Remember the apple! Remember the beauti- 
ful tale of Cupid and Psyche ! Remember Cornelius Agrip- 
pa's hbrary; the youth who opened in unhappy hour his 
magical volume ; and the choice moral which Southey, who 
always writes so morally, hath educed from that profitable 
story ! Remember Bluebeard ! But I am looking far into 
futurity. Bluebeard may be forgotten; Southey may be for- 

* Molztt. 



94 THE DOCTOR. 

gotten; Cornelius Agrippa may be no more remembered, 
Cupid and Psyche may be mere names which shall have out- 
lived ail tales belonging to them ; Adam and Eve — enough. 
Eat beans, if thou wilt, in spile of Pythagoras. Eat bacon 
with them, for the Levitical law hath been abrogated : and 
indulge in black puddings, if thou likest such food, though 
there be Methodists who prohibit them as sinful. But 
abstain from Aballiboozobanganorribo. 



CHAPTER XVII. P. I. 



THE HAPPINESS OF HAVING A CATHOLIC TASTE. 

There's no want of meat, sir ; 
Portly and curious viands are prepared 
To please all kinds of appetites. 

Massinger. 

A FASTIDIOUS taste is like a squeamish appetite ; the one 
has its origin in some disease of mind, as the other has in 
some ailment of the stomach. Your true lover of literature is 
never fastidious. I do not mean the helliio librorum, the 
swinish feeder, who thinks that every name which is to be 
found in a title page, or on a tombstone, ought to be rescued 
from oblivion ; nor those first cousins of the moth, who 
labour under a bulimy for black letter, and believe every- 
thing to be excellent which was written in the reign of 
Elizabeth. I mean the man of robust and healthy intellect, 
who gathers the harvest of literature into his barns, thrashes 
the straw, winnows the grain, grinds it at his own mill, 
bakes it in his own oven, and then eats the true bread of 
knowledge. If he bake his loaf upon a cabbage leaf, and 
eat onions with his bread and cheese, let who will find fault 
with him for his taste — not I ! 

The Doves, father as well as son, were blessed with a 
hearty intellectual appetite, and a strong digestion : but the 
son had the more catholic taste. He would have relished 
caviare ; would have ventured upon laver undeterred by its 
appearance — and would have liked it. 

What an excellent thing did God bestow on man 
When he did give him a good stomach !* 

He would have eaten sausages for breakfast at Norwich, 
Sally Luns at Bath, sweet butter in Cumberland, orange 
marmalade at Edinburgh, Findon haddocks at Aberdeen, 

* Beaumont ajid Fletcher. 



THE DOCTOR. 95 

and drunk punch with beef steaks to oblige the French if 
they insisted upon obliging him with a dejeuner a VAngloise, 

A good digestion turneth all to health.* 

He would have eaten squab pie in Devonshire, and the 
pie which is squabber than squab in Cornwall; sheep's 
head with the hair on in Scotland, and potatoes roasted on 
the hearth in Ireland ; frogs with the French, pickled her- 
rings with the Dutch, sourkrout with the Germans, macca- 
roni with the Italians, anise-seed with the Spaniards, garlic 
with anybody ; horse flesh with the Tartars ; ass flesh with 
the Persians ; dogs with the northwestern American Indians, 
curry with the Asiatic East Indians, birds' nests with the 
Chinese, mutton roasted with honey with the Turks, pismire 
cakes on the Orinoco, and turtle and venison with the lord 
mayor; and the turtle and venison he would have preferred 
to all the other dishes, because his taste, though catholic, 
was not indiscriminating. He would have tried all, tasted all, 
thriven upon all, and lived contentedly and cheerfully upon 
either, but he would have liked best that which was best. 
And his intellectual appetite had the same happy Catholicism. 

He would not have said with Euphues, " If I be in Crete, 
I can lie ; if in Greece, I can shift ; if in Italy, I can court 
it :" but he might have said with him, " I can carouse with 
Alexander ; abstain with Romulus ; eat with the epicure ; 
fast with the stoic ; sleep with Endymion ; watch with 
Chrysippus/' 

The reader will not have forgotten, I trust, (but if he should 
I now remindhim of it,) that in the brief inventory of Daniel's 
library there appeared some odd volumes of that "book full 
of Pantagruelism," the inestimable life of the great Gar- 
gantua. The elder Daniel could make nothing of this book ; 
and the younger, who was about ten years old when he began 
to read it, less than he could of the Pilgrim's Progress. But 
he made out something. 

Young Daniel was free from all the isms in Lily, and from 
rhotacism to boot; he was clear too of schism, and all the 
worse isms which have arisen from it : having by the bless- 
ing of Providence been bred up not in any denomination 
ending in ist or inian^ or erian or arian^ but as a dutiful and 
contented son of the church of England. In humour, how- 
ever, he was by nature a Pantagruelist. And, indeed, in his 
mature years he always declared that one of the reasons 
which had led him to reject the old humoral pathology was 
that it did not include Pantagruehsm, which he insisted de- 
pended neither upon heat nor cold, moisture nor dryness, nor 
upon any combination of those qualities ; but was itself a 
peculiar and elementary humour ; a truth, he said, of which 

* Herbert. 



96 THE DOCTOR 

he was feelingly and experimentally convinced, and lauded 
the gods therefore. 

Mr. Wordsworth, in that poem which Mr. Jeffrey has said 
won't do — (Mr. Jeffrey is always lucky in his predictions, 
whether as a politician or a critic — bear witness, Welling- 
ton ! bear witness, Wordsworth and Southey ! bear witness, 
Elia and Lord Byron !) Mr. Wordsworth, in that poem which 

" The high and tender muses shall accept 
"With gracious smile deliberately pleased, 
And listening time reward with sacred praise :" 

Mr. Wordsworth, in that noble poem, observes — 

" Oh many are the poets that are sown 
By nature !" 

Among the emblems of Daniel Heinsius — look at his head, 
reader, if thou hast a collection of portraits to refer to, and 
thou wilt marvel how so queer a conceit should have entered 
it, for seldom has there been a face more gnarled and knotted 
with crabbed cogitations than that of this man, who was one 
of the last of the giants — among his emblems, I say, is one 
which represents Cupid sowing a field, and little heads spring- 
ing out of the ground on all sides, some up to the neck, 
others to the shoulders, and some with the arms out. If the 
crop were examined, I agree with Mr. Wordsworth that 
poets would be found there as thick as darnel in the corn ; 
and grave counsellors would not be wanting whose advice 
would be that they should be weeded out. 

The Pantagruelists are scarcer. Greece produced three 
great tragic poets, and only one Aristophanes. The French 
had but one Rabelais when the seven pleiades shone in their 
poetical hemisphere. W^e have seen a succession of great 
tragedians from Betterton to the present time ; and in all that 
time there has been but one Grimaldi in whom the Panta- 
gruelism of pantomime has found its perfect representative. 

And yet the reader must not hastily conclude that I think 
Pantagruelism a better thing than poetry, because it is rarer; 
that were imputing to me the common error of estimating 
things by their rarity rather than their worth, an error more 
vulgar than any which Sir Thomas Brown has refuted. But 
I do hold this, that all the greatest poets have had a spice of 
Pantagruelism in their composition, which I verily believe 
was essential to their greatness. What the world lost in 
losing the Margites of Homer we know not, we only know 
that Homer had there proved himself a Pantagruelist. Shak- 
gpeare was a Pantagruelist ; so was Cervantes; and till the 
world shall have produced two other men in whom that 
humour has been wanting equal to these, I hold my point 
established. 



THE DOCTOR. 



97 



Some one objects Milton. I thank him for the exception ; 
it is just such an exception as proves the rule ; for look only at 
Milton's Limbo and you will see what a glorious Pantagru- 
elist he might have been — if the Puritans had not spoiled him 
for Pantagruelism. 



CHAPTER XVIII. P. I. 



ALL S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 



Tti 6' uv imiiVTia^w — vni rou Xdyov i^avayKa^oiiEvos iTTinvtia^fjaoixai. — HE- 
RODOTUS. « 

If William Dove had been installed in office with cap and 
bells andbawble, he would have been a professor of Panta- 
gruehsm, and might have figured in Flogel's history of such 
professors with Tyll Eulenspiegel, Piovano Arlotto, and Peter 
the Lion ; and in Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare with 
Muckle John, Rees Pengelding and Robin Rush. The hu- 
mour lay latent till the boy his nephew hit the spring by 
reading to him some of those chapters in Rabelais which, in 
their literal grotesqueness, were level to the capacity of both. 
These readings led to a piece of practical Pantagruelism, 
for which William would have been whipped if he had worn 
a fool's coat. 

One unlucky day, Dan was reading to him that chapter 
wherein young Gargantua relates the course of experiments 
which he had made with a velvet mask, a leaf of vervain, 
his mother's glove, a lappet worked with gold thread, a 
bunch of nettles, and other things more or less unfit for the 
purpose to which they were applied. To those who are ac- 
quainted with the history of Grandgousier's royal family, I 
need not explain what that purpose was ; nor must I to those 
who are not, (for reasons that require no explanation,) further 
than to say, it vvas the same purpose for which that wild 
enigma (the semi-composition of the Sphinx's Ghost) was 
designed — that enigma of all enigmas the wildest, 

" On which was written P^y/^a/^wX." 

William had frequently interrupted him with bursts of 
laughter; but when they came to that crowning experiment 
in which Gargantua thought he had found the beau ideal of 
what he was seeking, William clapped his hands, and with 
an expression of glee in lis countenance worthy of Eulen- 
spiegel himself exclaimed, '* Thou shalt try the goose, Dan! 
thou shalt try the goose !" 



98 THE DOCTOR. 

So with William's assistance, the goose was tried. They 
began with due prudence, according to rule, by catching a 
goose. In this matter a couple of du: ':s Lord Lauderdale 
knows would not have answered as well. The boy then, hav- 
ing gone through the ceremony which the devotees of Baal 
are said to have performed at the foot of his image, as the 
highest act of devotion, (an act of super-reverence it was,) 
and for which the Jews are said to have called him in mock- 
ery Baalzebul, instead of Baalzebub, cried out that he was 
ready. He was at that moment in the third of those eight 
altitudes which form a Rik'ath. My readers who are versed 
in the fashionable poets of the day — (fAisday I mean — their 
fashion not being ensured for to-morrow) — such readers, I 
say, know that a rose is called a ghul, and a nightingale a 
buibul, and that this is one way of dressing up Enghsh poetry 
in Turkish costume. But if they desire to learn a little 
more of what Mohammedan customs are. they may consult 
D'Ohsson's Tableau of the Ottoman Empire, and there they 
may not only find the eight attitudes described, but see them 
represented. Of the third attitude, or Rukeou as it is denom- 
inated, I shall only say that the ancients represented one of 
their deities in it, and that it is the very attitude in which ^5 
in prcesenti committed that notorious act for which he is cel- 
ebrated in scholastic and immortal rhyme, and for which 
poor Syntax bore the blame. Verbum sit sat sapienti. Du- 
ring the reign of liberty and equality, a Frenchman was 
guillotined for exemplifying it under Marat's monument in 
the Place da Carrousel. 

The bird was brought, but young Daniel had not the 
strength of young Gargantua ; the goose, being prevent- 
ed by VViUiam from drawing back, pressed forward; they 
were by the side of the brook, and the boy, by this violent 
and unexpected movement, was, as the French would say in 
the poUtest and most delicate of all languages, culbuie, or, in 
sailors' English, capsized into the water. The misfortune 
did not end there; for falling with his forehead against a 
stone, he received a cut upon the brow which left a scar as 
long as he lived. 

It was not necessary to prohibit a repetition of what Wil- 
liam called the speriment. Both had been sufficiently fright- 
ened ; and William never felt more pain of mind than on this 
occasion, when the father, with a shake of the head, a look 
of displeasure, and a low voice, told him he ought to have 
known better than to have put the lad upon such pranks ! 

The mishap, however, was not without its use. For in after 
life, when Daniel felt an inclination to do anything which 
might better be left undone, the recollection that he had tried 
the goose served as a salutary memento, and saved him, per- 
haps, sometimes from worse consequences. 



THE DOCTOR. 99 



CHAPTER XIX. P. I. 

A CONVERSATION WITH MISS GRAVE AIRS. 

Cheri suscepto inserviendum fuit : SO Jacobus Mycillus pleadeth for him 
sell in his translation of Lucian's Dialogues, and so do I : I must and 
will perform my task. — Burton. 

" It does not signify, Miss Graveairs ! you may flirt your 
fan, and overcloud that white forehead with a frown ; but I 
assure you the last chapter could not be dispensed with. 
The doctor used to relate the story himself to his friends ; 
and often alluded to it as the most wholesome lesson he had 
ever received. My dear Miss Graveairs, let not those intel- 
ligent eyes shoot forth in anger, arrows which ought to be re- 
served for other execution. You ought not to be displeased ; 
ought not, must not, cannot, shall not !" 

" But you ought not to write such things, Mr. Author ; 
really you ought not. What can be more unpleasant than to 
be reading aloud, and come unexpectedly upon something so 
strange that you know not whether to proceed or make a full 
stop, or where to look, or what to do? It is too bad of 
3'^ou, sir, let me tell you ! and if I come to anything more of 
the kind, I must discard the book. It is provoking enough to 
meet with so much that one does not understand : but to meet 
with anything that one ought not to understand is worse. 
Sir, it is not to 'be forgiven ; and I tell you again, that if I 
meet with anything more of the same kind I must discard 
the book." 

" Nay, dear Miss Graveairs !" 

" I must, Mr. Author ; positively I must." 

" Nay, dear Miss Graveairs ! Banish Tristram Shandy ! 
banish Smollett, banish Fielding, banish Richardson ! But for 
the doctor — sweet Doctor Dove, kind Dr. Dove, true Doctor 
Dove, banish not him! Banish Doctor Dove, and banish all 
the world ! Come, come, good sense is getting the better 
of preciseness. That stitch in the forehead will not long 
keep the brows in their constrained position ; and the incipi- 
ent smile which already brings out that dimple, is the natu- 
ral and proper feeling." 

" Well, you are a strange man !" 

" Call me a rare one, and 1 shall be satisfied. ' O rare Ben 
Jonson' you know was epitaph enough for one of our great- 
est men." 

*' But seriously, why should you put anything in your book, 
which, if not actually exceptionable, exposes it at least to 
that sort of censure which is most injurious]" 
5* 



100 THE DOCTOR. 

" That question, dear madam, is so sensibly proposed that 
I will answer it with all serious sincerity. There is nothing 
exceptionable in these volumes ; ' Certes,' as Euphues Lily 
has said, ' I think there be more speeches here which for 
gravity will mislike the foolish, than unseemly terms which 
for vanity may offend the wise.' There is nothing in them 
that I might not have read to Queen Elizabeth if it had been 
my fortune to have lived in her golden days ; nothing that 
can by possibility taint the imagination, or strengthen one 
evil propensity, or weaken one virtuous principle. But they 
are not composed like a forgotten novel of Dr. Towers's to 
be read aloud in dissenting families instead of a moral essay 
or a sermon ; nor like Mr. Kelt's Emily to complete the edu- 
cation of young ladies by supplying them with an abstract 
of universal knowledge. Neither have they any pretensions 
to be placed on the same shelf with Coelebs. But the book 
is a moral book ; its tendency is good, and the morality is 
ooth the wholesomer and pleasanter because it is not admin- 
istered as physic, but given as food. I don't like morality 
in doses." 

" But why, my good Mr. Author, why lay yourself open 
vO censure V 

" Miss Graveairs, nothing excellent was ever produced by 
any author who had the fear of censure before his eyes. 
He who would please posterity must please himself by choos- 
ing his own course. There are only two classes of writers 
who dare do this, the best and the worst — for this is one of 
the many cases in which extremes meet. The mediocres in 
every grade aim at pleasing the public, and conform them- 
selves to the fashion of their age, whatever it may be." 

My doctor, like the Matthew Henderson of Burns, was a 
queer man, and in that respect I, his friend and biographer, 
humbly resemble him. The resemblance may be natural, or 
I may have caught it — this I pretend not to decide, but so it 
is. Perhaps it might have been well if I had resolved upon 
a further designation of chapters, and distributed them into 
masculine and feminine ; or into the threefold arrangement 
of virile, feminile and puerile ; considering the book as a 
family breakfast, where there should be meat for men, muffins 
for women, and milk for children. Or I might have adopted 
the device of the Porteusian Society, and marked my chap- 
ters as they (very usefully) have done the Bible, pointing out 
what should be read by all persons for edification, and what 
may be passed over by the many, as instructive or intelligible 
only to the learned. 

Here, however, the book is — 

An orchard bearing several trees, 
And fruits of several taste.* 

* Middleton and Rowley's Spanish Gipsy. 



THE DOCTOR. 101 

Ladies and gentlemen, my gentle readers, one of our liveliest 
and most popular old dramatists knew so well the capricious 
humour of an audience that he made his prologue say 

" He'd rather dress upon ^ triumph day 
My lord mayor's feast, and make them sauces too. 
Sauce for each several mouth ; nay further go, 
He'd rather build up those invincible pies 
And castle custards that affright all eyes — 
Nay, eat them all and their artillery — 
Than dress for such a curious company, 
One single dish." 

But I, gentle readers, have set before you a table liberally 
spread. It is not expected or desired that every dish should 
suit the palate of all the guests, but every guest will find 
something that he likes. You, madam, may prefer those 
boiled chickens, with stewed celery — or a little of that fri- 
candeau ; the lady opposite will send her plate for some 
pigeon pie. The doctor has an eye upon the venison — and 
so I see has the captain. Sir, I have not forgotten that this 
is one of your fast days — I am glad, therefore, that the turbot 
proves so good — and that dish has been prepared for you. 
Sir John, there is garhc in the fricassee. The Hungarian 
wine has a bitterness which everybody may not like; the 
ladies will probably prefer Malmsey. The captain sticks to 
his Port, and the doctor to his Madeira. Sir John, I shall be 
happy to take Sauterne with you. There is a splendid trifle 
for the young folks, which some of the elders also will not 
despise : and I only wish my garden could have furnished 
a better dessert; but considering our climate, it is not amiss. 
Is not this entertainment better than if 1 had set you all 
down to a round of beef and turnips ? 

If anything be set to a wrong taste, 

'Tis not the meat there, but the mouth's displaced ; 

Remove but that sick palate all is well.* 

Like such a dinner I would have my book — something for 
everybody's taste, and all good of its kind. 

It ought also to resemble the personage of whom it treats ; 
and \ 

If ony whiggish whingin sot 

To blame the doctor dare, man ; 
May dool and sorrow be his lot. 

For the doctor was a rare man If 

Some whiggish sots I dare say will blame him, and whig- 
gish sots they will be who do ! 

" En un mot ; mes amis, je n'ai entrepris de vous contenter 
tous en general, ainsi uns et autres en particulier ; et par 
special, moymeme."| 

* Ben Jonson. t Burns. t Pasquier. 



102 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER XX. P. I. 



HOW TO MAKE GOLD. 

L'alchimista non travaglia a voto ; 

Ei cerca I'oro, ei cerca I'oro, io dico 

Ch' ei cerca I'oro ; e s' ei giungesse in porto 

Fora ben per se stesso e per altrui. 

L'oro e somma posanza infra mortali ; 

Chiedine a cavalier, chiedine a dame, 

Chiedine a tutto il mondo. 

iJHIABKEEi. 

William had heard so much about experiments that it is 
not surprising he should have been for making some himself. 
It was well indeed for his family that the speculative mind, 
which lay covered rather than concealed under the elder 
Daniel's ruminating manners, and quiet, contented course of 
life, was not quickened by his acquaintance with the school- 
master into an experimental and dangerous activity, instead 
of being satisfied with theoretical dreams. For Guy had found 
a book in that little collection which might have produced 
more serious consequences to the father than the imitation 
of Gargantua had done to the son. 

This book was the exposition of Eirenaeus Philalethes upon 
Sir George Ripley's hermetico-poetical works. Daniel had 
formerly set as little value upon it as upon Rabelais. He 
knew indeed what its purport was, thus much he had gath- 
ered from it; but although it professed to contain "the 
plainest and most excellent discoveries of the most hidden 
secrets of the ancient philosophers that were ever yet pub- 
lished," it was to him as unintelligible as the mysteries of 
Pantagruelism. He could make nothing of the work that 
was to ascend in bus and nuhi from the moon up to the sun, 
though the expositor had expounded that this was in nuiibus ; 
nor of the lake which was to be boiled with the ashes of 
Hermes's tree, day and night without ceasing, till the heav- 
enly nature should ascend and the earthly descend ; nor of 
the crow's bill, the white dove, the sparkling cherubim, and 
the soul of the green lion. But he took those cautions sim- 
ply and honestly as cautions, which were in fact the lures 
Avhereby so many infatuated persons had been drawn on to 
their own undoing. The author had said that his work was 
not written for the information of the illiterate, and illiterate 
Daniel knew himself to be. " Our writings," says the dark 
expositor, " shall prove as a curious edged knife : to some 
they shall carve out dainties, and to others it shall serve only 



THE DOCTOR. 103 

to cut their fingers. Yet we are not to be blamed ; for we 
do seriously profess to any that shall attempt the work, that 
he attempts the highest piece of philosophy that is in nature ; 
and though we write in English, yet our matter will be as 
hard as Greek to some, who will think they understand us 
well, when they misconstrue our meaning most perversely ; 
for is it imaginable that they who are fools in nature should 
be wise in our books, which are testimonies unto nature V^ 
and again : " Make sure of thy true matter, which is no small 
thing to know ; and though we have named it, yet we have 
done it so cunningly, that thou mayst sooner stumble at our 
books than at any thou ever didst read in thy life. Be not 
deceived either with receipt or discourse ; for we verily do 
not intend to deceive you ; but if you will be deceived, be 
deceived ! Our way, which is an easy way, and in which no 
man may err — our broad way, our linear way, we have vowed 
never to reveal but in metaphor. I, being moved with pity, 
will hint it to you. Take that which is not yet perfect, nor 
yet wholly imperfect, but in a way to perfection, and out of 
it make what is most noble and most perfect. This you may 
conceive to be an easier receipt than to take that which is 
already perfect, and extract out of it what is imperfect and 
make it perfect, and after out of that perfection to draw a 
plusquam perfection : and yet this is true, and we have 
wrought it. But this last discovery which I hinted in few 
words is it which no man ever did so plainly lay open ; nor 
may any make it more plain upon pain of an anathema." 

All this was heathen Greek to Daniel, except the admoni- 
tion which it contained. But Guy had meddled with this 
perilous pseudo science, and used to talk with him concern- 
ing its theory, which Daniel soon comprehended, and which, 
like many other theories, wanted nothing but a foundation to 
rest upon. That everything had its own seed as well as its 
own form, seemed a reasonable position ; and that the fer- 
mental virtue, " which is the wonder of the world, and by 
which water becomes herbs, trees, and plants, fruits, flesh, 
blood, stones, minerals, and everything," works only in kind. 
Was it not then absurd to allow the fermentive and multipli- 
cative power existed in almost all other things, and yet deny 
it to gold, the most perfect of all sublunary things I The 
secret lay in extracting from gold its hidden seed. 

Ben Jonson has with his wonted ability presented the 
theory of this delusive art. His knavish alchymist asks of 
an unbeliever — 

" Why, what have you observed, sir, in our art 
Seems so impossible ? 

Surly. But your whole work, no more ! 
That you shouki hatch gold in a furnace, sir, 
As they do eggs in Egypt. 



104 THE DOCTOR. 

Subtle. Sir, do you 

Believe that eggs are hatch'd so ? 

Surly. If I should? 

Subtle. Why I think that the greater miracle. 
No egg but diifers from a chicken more 
Than metals m themselves. 

Surly. That cannot be. 

The egg's ordained by nature to that end, 
And is a chicken in potentid. 

Subtle. The same we say of lead, and other metals. 
Which would be gold if they had time. 

Mammon. And that 

Our art doth further. 

Subtle. Ay, for 'twere absurd 

To think that nature in the earth bred gold 
Perfect in the instant : something went before. 
There must be remote matter. 

Surly. Ay, what is that ? 

Subtle. Marry we say — 

Mammon. Ay, now it heats ; stand, father ; 
Pound him to dust. 

Subtle. It is, of the one part, 

A humid exhalation, wliich we call 

Materia liquzda, or the unctuous water ; ^ 

On the other part a certain crass and viscous 
Portion of earth ; both which concorporate 
Do make the elementary matter of gold ; 
Which is not yet propria materia, 
But common to all metals and all stones ; 
For where it is forsaken of that moisture. 
And hath more dryness, it becomes a stone ; 
Where it retains more of the humid fatness. 
It turns to sulphur or to quicksilver, 
Who are the parents of all other metals. 
Nor can this remote matter suddenly 
Progress so from extreme unto extreme, 
As to grow gold, and leap o'er all the means. 
Nature doth first beget the imperfect, then 
Proceeds she to the perfect. Of that airy 
And oily water, mercury is engendered ; 
Sulphur of the fat and earthy part ; the one, 
Which is the last, supplying the place of male, 
The other of the female in all metals. 
Some so believe hermaphrodeity. 
That both do act and suffer. But these too 
Make the rest ductile, malleable, extensive. 
And even in gold they are ; for we do find 
Seeds of them, by our fire, and gold in them ; 
And can produce the species of each metal 
More perfect thence than nature doth inearth." 

I have no cause to say here, with Scheick Mohammed Ali 
Hazin, that " taste for poetical and elegant composition has 
turned the reins of my ink-dropping pen away from the road 
which lay before it ;" for this passage of learned Ben lay 
directly in the way ; and nowhere, reader, couldst thou find 
the theory of the alchymists more ably epitomized. 

" Father," said the boy Daniel one day, after listening to a 



THE DOCTOR. 105 

conversation upon this subject, " I should like to learn to 
make gold." 

" And what vvouldst thou do, Daniel, if thou couldst make 
it 1" was the reply. 

" Why, I would build a great house, and fill it with books, 
and have as much money as the king, and be as great a man 
as the squire." 

" Mayhap, Daniel, in that case thou wouldst care for books 
as little as the squire, and have as little time for them as the 
king. Learning is better than house or land. As for money, 
enough is enough ; no man can enjoy more ; and the less 
he can be contented with, the wiser and better he is likely to 
be. What, Daniel, does our good poet tell us in the great 
verse book 1 

• Nature's with little pleased ; enough's a feast : 
A sober life but a small charge requires : 
But man, the author of his own unrest, 
The more he hath, the more he still desires.' 

No, boy, thou canst never be as rich as the king, nor as great 
as the squire ; but thou mayst be a philosopher, and that is 
being as happy as either." 

" A great deal happier," said Guy. " The squire is as far 
from being the happiest man in the neighbourhood as he is 
from being the wisest or the best. And the king, God bless 
him ! has care enough upon his head to bring on early gray 
hairs. 

' Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.' " 

" But what does a philosopher do ?" rejoined the boy. 
" The squire hunts, and shoots, and smokes, and drinks punch, 
and goes to justice meetings. And the king goes to fight for 
us against the French, and governs the parliament, and makes 
laws. But I cannot tell what a philosopher's business is. 
Do they do anything else besides making almanacs and 
gold V 

" Yes," said William, " they read the stars." 

" And what do they read there V 

" What neither thou nor I can understand, Daniel,'* replied 
the father, " however nearly it may concern us ]" 



106 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER XXI. P. I. 

A DOUBT CONCERNING THE USES OF PHILOSOPHY. 

El comienzo de salud 
es el saber, 
distinguir y conocer 
qual es virtud. 

Proverbios del Marques de Santillana. 

That grave reply produced a short pause. It was broken 
by the boy, who said, returning to the subject, •' I have been 
thinking, father, that it is not a good thing to be a philoso- 
pher." 

" And what, my son, has led thee to that thought ]" 

" What I have read at the end of the dictionary, father. 
There was one philosopher that was pounded in a mortar." 

" That, Daniel," said the father, " could neither have been 
the philosopher's fault nor his choice." 

"But it was because he was a philosopher, my lad," said 
Guy, " that he bore it so bravely, and said, 'Beat on; you 
can only bruise the shell of Anaxarchus !' If he had not 
been a philosopher they might have pounded him just the 
same, but they would never have put him in the dictionary. 
Epictetus in hke manner bore the torments which his wicked 
master inflicted upon him without a groan, only saying, 
' Take care, or you will break my leg ;' and when the leg was 
broken, he looked the wretch in the face, and said, ' I told 
you you would break it.' " 

" But," said the youngster, *' there was one philosopher 
who chose to live in a tub ; and another, who, that he might 
never again see anything to withdraw his mind from medita- 
tion, put out his eyes by looking upon a bright brass basin, 
such as I cured my warts in." 

" He might have been a wise man," said Wilham Dove, 
"but not wondrous wise; for if he had, he would not have 
used the basin to put his eyes out. He would have jumped 
into a quickset hedge, and scratched them out, like the man 
of our town ; because, when he saw his eyes were out, he 
might then have jumped into another hedge and scratched 
them in again. The man of our town was the greatest phi- 
losopher of the two." 

" And there was one," continued the boy, " who had better 
have blinded himself at once, for he did nothing else but cry 
at everything he saw. Was not this being very foohshi" 



THE riOCTOR. 107 

" I am sure," says William, " it was not being merry and 
wise." 

" There was another who said that hunger was his daily 
food." 

" He must have kept such a table as Duke Humphrey," 
quoth William ; " I should not have liked to dine with him." 

"Then there was Crates," said the persevering boy; "he 
had a good estate, and sold it, and threw the money into the 
sea, saying, ' Away, ye paltry cares ! 1 will drown you, that 
you may not drown me.' " 

" I should hke to know," said WilUam, " what the over- 
seers said to that chap, when he applied to the parish for 
support." 

" They sent him off to bedlam, I suppose," said the mo- 
ther; "it was the fit place for him, poor creature." 

" And when Aristippus set out upon a journey, he bade his 
servants throw away all their money, that they might travel 
the better. Why, they must have begged their way, and it 
cannot be right to beg if people are not brought to it by mis- 
fortune. And there were some who thought there was no 
God. 1 am sure they were fools, for the Bible says so." 

"Well, Daniel," said .Guy, " thou hast studied the end of 
the dictionary to some purpose !" 

" And the Bible, too. Master Guy !" said Dinah, her coun- 
tenance brightening with joy at her son's concluding remark. 

" It's the best part of the book," said the boy, replying to 
his schoolmaster ; " there are more entertaining and surpri- 
sing things there than I ever read in any other place, except 
in my father's book about Pantagruel." 



CHAPTER XXn. P. I. 

Tdv S' SLiranetP^jxevos. 

O felice cold, che intender puote 
Le cagion de le cose di natura, 
Che al piu di que' che vivon sono ignote ; 

E sotto 11 pi^ si mette ogni paura 
De f'ati, e de la morte, ch'& si trista, 
Ne di vulgo gli cal, nh d'altro ha cura, 

Tansillo. 

The elder Daniel had listened to this dialogue in his usual 
quiet way, smiling sometimes at his brother William's obser- 
vations. He now stroked his forehead, and looking mildly 
but seriously at the boy, addressed him thus : — 

" My son, many things appear strtlnge or silly in them- 
selves if they are presented to us simply, without any notice 



108 THE DOCTOR. 

when and where they were done, and upon what occasion. 
If any strangers, for example, had seen thee washing thy 
hands in an empty basin, without knowing the philosophy of 
the matter, they would have taken thee for an innocent, and 
thy master and me for little better; or they might have sup- 
posed some conjuring was going on. The things which the 
old philosophers said and did, would appear, 1 dare say, as 
wise to us as they did to the people of their own times, if 
we knew why and in what circumstances they were done 
and said. 

" Daniel, there are two sorts of men in all ranks and ways 
of life, the wise and the foolish ; and there are a great many 
degrees between them. That some foolish people have 
called themselves philosophers, and some wicked ones, and 
some who were out of their wits, is just as certain as that 
persons of all these descriptions are to be found among all 
conditions of men. 

" Philosophy, Daniel, is of two kinds : that which relates 
to conduct, and that which relates to knowledge. The first 
teaches us to value all things at their real worth, to be con- 
tented with httle, modest in prosperity, patient in trouble, 
equal-minded at all times. It teaches us our duty to our 
neighbour and ourselves. It is that wisdom of which King 
Solomon speaks in our rhyme book. Reach me the volume." 
Then turning to the passage in his favourite Du Bartas, he 
read these lines : — 

" ' She's God's own mirror ; she's a light whose glance 
Springs from the lightning of his countenance. 
She's mildest heaven's most sacred influence; 
Never decays her beauties' excellence, 
Aye like herself; and she doth always trace 
iSot only the same path but the same pace. 
Without her honour, health and wealth would prove 
Three poisons to me. Wisdom from above 
Is the only moderatrix, spring and guide, 
Organ and honour, of all gifts beside.' 

" But let us look in the Bible : ay, this is the place : — 

" ' For in her is an understanding spirit, holy, one only, 
manifold, subtile, hvely, clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to 
hurt, loving the thing that is good, quick, which cannot be 
letted, ready to do good ; 

" * Kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all 
power, overseeing all things, and going through all under- 
standing, pure and most subtile spirits. 

"' For wisdom is more moving than any motion : she pass- 
eth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. 

" ' For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure in- 
fluence, flowing from the glory of the Almighty ; therefore 
can no defiled thing faM into her. 

" ' For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the iin 



THE DOCTOR. 109 

spotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his 
goodness. 

" ' And being but one she can do all things ; andremainmg 
in herself she maketh all things new : and in all ages enter- 
ing into holy souls she maketh them friends of God and 
prophets. 

" ' For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with wisdom. 

" ' For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the 
order of stars : being compared with the light she is found 
before it. 

" ' For after this cometh night : but vice shall not prevail 
against wisdom.' " 

He read this with a solemnity that gave weight to every 
word. Then closing the book, after a short pause, he pro- 
ceeded in a lower tone — 

" The philosophers of whom you have read in the diction- 
ary possessed this wisdom only in part, because they were 
heathens, and therefore could see no further than the light of 
mere reason could show the way. The fear of the Lord is 
the beginning of wisdom, and they had not that to begin with 
So the thoughts which ought to have made them humble pro- 
duced pride, and so far their wisdom proved but folly. The 
humblest Christian who learns his duty, and performs it as 
well as he can, is wiser than they. He does nothing to be 
seen of men ; and that was their motive for most of their ac- 
tions. 

" Now for the philosophy which relates to knowledge. 
Knowledge is a brave thing. I am a plain, ignorant, untaught 
man, and know my ignorance. But it is a brave thing when 
we look around us in this wonderful world to understand 
something of what we see : to know something of the earth 
on which we move, the air which we breathe, and the ele- 
ments whereof we are made : to comprehend the motions of 
the moon and stars, and measure the distances between them, 
and compute times and seasons : to observe the laws which 
sustain the universe by keeping all things in their courses : 
to search into the mysteries of nature, and discover the 
hidden virtue of plants and stones, and read the signs and 
tokens which are shown us, and make out the meaning of 
hidden things, and apply all this to the benefit of our lellow- 
creatures. 

" Wisdom and knowledge, Daniel, make the difference be 
tween man and man, and that between man and beast is 
hardly greater. 

" These things do not always go together. There may be 
wisdom without knowledge, and there may be knowledge 
without wisdom. A man without knowledge, if he walk 
humbly with his God, and live in charity with his neighbours, 
may be wise unto salvation. A man without wisdom may 
not find his knowledge avail him quite so well. But it is he 



no THE DOCTOR. 

who possesses both that is the true philosopher. The more 
he knows, the more he is desirous of knowing ; and yet the 
further he advances in knowledge the better he understands 
how little he can attain, and the more deeply he feels that 
God alone can satisfy the infinite desires of an immortal soul. 
To understand this is the height and perfection of philoso- 
phy." 

Then opening the Bible which lay before him, he read 
these verses from the Proverbs : — 

" ' My son, if thou wilt receive my words — 

*' ' So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply 
thine heart to understanding ; 

" ' Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy 
voice for understanding ; 

" ' If thou seekest after her as silver, and searchest for her 
as for hid treasures ; 

" ' Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find 
the knowledge of God. 

" ' For the Lord giveth wisdom : out of his mouth cometh 
knowledge and understanding. 

" ' He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous : he is a 
buckler to them that walk uprightly. 

" ' He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the 
way of his saints. 

*' ' Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, 
and equity ; yea, every good path. 

*' ' When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge 
is pleasant unto thy soul ; 

*' ' Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep 
thee, 

" ' To deliver thee from the way of the evil.' 

" Daniel, my son," after a pause he pursued, " thou art a 
diligent and good lad. God hath given thee a tender and du- 
tiful heart ; keep it so, and it will be a wise one, for thou hast 
the beginning of wisdom. I wish thee to pursue knowledge, 
because in pursuing it, happiness will be found by the way. 
If I have said anything now which is above thy years, it will 
come to mind in after time, when I am gone, perhaps, but 
when thou mayst profit by it. God bless thee, my child !" 

He stretched out his right hand at these words, and laid it 
gently upon the boy's head. What he said was not forgot- 
ten, and throughout life the son never thought of that bless- 
ing without feeling that it had taken effect. 



•rHE DOCTOR. Ill 



CHAPTER XXIII. P. I. 

ROWLAND DIXON AND HIS COMPANY OF PUPPETS. 

Alii se ve tan eficaz el Uanto, 
las fabulas y historias retratadas, 
que parece verdad, y es dulce encanto. 

* * # * 

Y para el vulgo rudo, que ignorante 

aborrece el manjar costoso, guisa 

el plato del gracioso extravagante ; 
Con que les hartas deconlento y risa, 

gustando de mirar sayal grossero, 

mas que sutil y Candida camisa. 

Joseph Ortiz de Villena. 

Were it not for that happy facility with which the mind in 
such cases commonly satisfies itself, my readers would find 
it more easy to place themselves in imagination at Ingleton 
a hundred years ago, than at Thebes or Athens, so strange 
must it appear to them that a familj'^ should have existed m 
humble but easy circumstances, among whose articles of 
consumption neither tea nor sugar had a place, who never 
raised potatoes in their garden nor saw them at their table, 
and who never wore a cotton garment of any kind. 

Equally unlike anything to which my contemporaries have 
been accustomed, must it be for them to heai of an English- 
man whose talk was of philosophy, moral or speculative, not 
of politics ; who read books in folio, and had never seen a 
newspaper ; nor ever heard of a magazine, review, or literary 
journal of any kind. Not less strange must it seem to them 
who if they please may travel by steam at the rate of thirty 
miles an hour upon the Liverpool and Manchester railway, 
or at ten miles an hour by stage upon one of the more 
frequented roads, to consider the little intercourse which in 
those days was carried on between one part of the kingdom 
and another. During young Daniel's boyhood, and for many 
years after he had reached the age of manhood, the whole car- 
riage of the northern counties, and, indeed, of all the remoter 
parts, was performed by pack horses, the very name of which 
would long since have been as obsolete as their use, if it had 
not been preserved by the sign or appellation of some of 
those inns at which they were accustomed to put up. Rarely, 
indeed, were the roads about Ingleton marked by any other 
wheels than those of its indigenous carts. 

That little town, however, obtained considerable celebrity 
in those days as being the home and head quarters of Row- 



112 THE DOCTOR. 

land Dixon, the gesticulator maximus, or puppet showmas- 
ter-general, of the North ; a person not less eminent in his 
line than Powel whom the Spectator hws immortalized. 

My readers must not form their notion of Rowland Dix- 
on's company from the ambulatory puppet shows which of 
late years have added new sights and sounds to the specta- 
cles and cries of London. Far be it from me to depreciate 
those peripatetic street exhibitions, which you may have be- 
fore your window at a call, and by which the hearts of so 
many children are continually delighted. Nay, I confess that 
few things in that great city carry so much comfort to the 
cockles of my own, as the well-known voice of Punch — 

" The same which in my school-boy days 
I listened to," 

as Wordsworth says of the cuckoo ; 

" And I can listen to it yet — 
And listen till I do beget 

That golden time again." 

It is a voice that seems to be as much in accord with the 
noise of to\^ns, and the riotry of fairs, as the note of the 
cuckoo, with the joyousness of spring fields and the fresh 
verdure of the vernal woods. 

But Rowland Dixon's company of puppets would be piti- 
fully disparaged, if their size, uses, or importance were to be 
estimated by the street performances of the present day. 

The dramatis personae of these modern exhibitions never, 
I believe, comprehends more than four characters, and these 
four are generally the same, to wit, Punch, Judy, as she who 
used to be called Joan is now denominated, the devil, and 
the doctor, or sometimes the constable in the doctor's stead. 
There is, therefore, as little variet)' in the action as in the 
personages. And their dimensions are such that the whole 
company and the theatre in which they are exhibited are car- 
ried along the streets at quick time and with a light step by 
the two persons who manage the concern. 

But the Rowlandian, Dixonian, or Ingletonian puppets 
were as large as life ; and required for their removal a cara- 
van, (in the use to which that word is now appropriated,) a 
vehicle of such magnitude and questionable shape, that if 
Don Quixote had encountered its like upon the highway, he 
would have regarded it as the most formidable adventure 
which had ever been presented to his valour. And they 
went as far beyond our street puppets in the sphere of their 
subjects as they exceeded them in size ; for in that sphere 
quicquid agunt homines was included — and a great deal more. 

In no country and in no stage of society has the drama 
ever existed in a ruder state thar that in which this com- 



THE DOCTOR. 113 

pany presented it. The drolls of Bartholomew fair were 
hardly so far below the legitimate drama, as they were above 
that of Rowland Dixon; for the drolls were written compo- 
sitions ; much ribaldry might be, and no doubt was, interpo- 
lated as opportunity allowed or invited ; but the main dia- 
logue was prepared. Here, on the corrtrary, there was no 
other preparation than that of frequent practice. The stock 
pieces were founded upon popular stories or ballads, such as 
Fair Rosamond, Jane Shore, and Bateman who hanged him- 
self for love; with Scriptural subjects for Easter and Whit- 
sun week, such as the Creation, the Deluge, Susannah and 
the Elders, and Nebuchadnezzar, or the Fall of Pride. These 
had been handed down from the time of the old mysteries 
and miracle plays, having, in the progress of time and 
change, descended from the monks and clergy to become 
the property of such managers as Povvel and Rowland 
Dixon. In what manner they were represented when thus 

" Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, 
Fallen from their high estate, 

may be imagined from a playbill of Queen Anne's reign, in 
which one of them is thus advertised: — 

" At Crawley's booth, over against the Crown Tavern ir* 
Smithfield, during the time of Bartholomew fair, will be pre- 
sented a little opera, called the Old Creation of the World, 
yet newly revived ; with the addition of Noah's flood. Also 
several fountains playing water during the time of the play. 
The last scene does present Noah and his family coming 
out of the ark, with all the beasts two and two, and all the 
fowls of the air are seen in a prospect sitting upon trees. 
Likewise over the ark is seen the sun rising in a most glo- 
rious manner. Moreover a multitude of angels will be seen 
in a double rank, which presents a double prospect, one for 
the sun, the other for a palace, where will be seen six angels, 
ringing of bells. Likewise machines descend from above 
double and treble, with Dives rising out of hell, and Lazarus 
seen in Abraham's bosom ; besides several figures dancing 
jigs, sarabands, and country dances, to the admiration of the 
spectators ; with the merry conceits of Squire Punch and 
Sir John Spendall." 

I have not found it anywhere stated at what time these 
irreverent representations were discontinued in England, 
nor whether (which is not unlikely) they were put an end to 
by the interference of the magistrates. The Autos Sacra- 
mentales, which form the most characteristic department of 
the Spanish drama, were prohibited at Madrid in 1763, at the 
instance of the Conde de Teba, then archbishop of Toledo, 
chiefly because of the profaneness of the actors, and the 
indecency of the places in which they were represented: it 
seems, therefore, that if they had been performed by clerks. 



114 "' THE DOCTOR. 

and within consecrated precincts, he would not have objected 
to them. The religious dramas, though they are not less 
extraordinary and far n»ore reprehensible, because in many 
instances nothing can be more pernicious than their direct 
tendency, were not included in the same prohibition ; the 
same marks of external reverence not being required for 
saints and images as for the great object of Romish idolatry. 
These probably will long continue to delight the Spanish 
people. But facts of the same kind may be met with nearer 
home. So recently as the year 1816, the sacrifice of Isaac 
was represented on the stage at Paris : Samson was the 
subject of the ballet ; the unshorn son of Manoah delighted 
the spectators by dancing a solo with the gates of Gaza on his 
back ; Delilah clipped him during the intervals of a jig ; and the 
Philistines surrounded and captured him in a country dance ! 
That Punch made his appearance in the puppet show of 
the Deluge, most persons know ; his exclamation of "Hazy 
weather. Master Noah," having been preserved by tradition. 
In all of these wooden dramas, whether sacred or profane, 
Punch indeed bore a part, and that part is w^ell described in 
the verses entitled Pvp(£ gesticulantes, which may be found 
among the Selecta Poemata Anglorum Latina, edited by Mr. 
^'opham. 

" Ecce tamen subito, et medio discrimine rerum, 
Ridiculus vultiv procedit homuncio, tergum 
Cui riget in gibbum, immensusque protruditur alvus : 
PuNCHius huic noinen, nee erat petulantior unquam 
UUus ; quinetiam media inter seria semper 
Importunus adest, lepidusque et garrulus usque 
Perstat, permiscetque jocos, atque omnia turbat. 
Saepe puellarum densa ad subsellia sese 
Convertens— sedet en ! pulchras mea, dixit, arnica 
lllic inter eas ! Oculo simal unprobus uno 
Connivens aliquam illarum quasi noverat, ipsam 
Quaeque pudens se signari pudefacta rubescit ; 
Totaque subridet juvenumque virumque corona. 
Cum vero ambiguis obscoenas turpia dictis 
Innuit, eflfuso testantur gaudia risu." 

In one particular only this description is unlike the Punch 
of the Ingleton company. He was not a homuncio, but a 
full grown personage, who had succeeded with httle altera- 
tion either of attributes or appearance to the vice of the old 
mysteries, and served like the clown of our own early stage, 
and the Gracioso of the Spaniards, to scatter mirth over the 
serious part of the performance, or turn it into ridicule. 
The wife was an appendage of later times, when it was not 
thought good for Punch to be alone ; and when, as these 
performances had fallen into lower hands, the quarrels 
between such a pair afforded a standing subject equally 
adapted to the capacity of the interlocutor and of his 
audience. 



THE DOCTOR. 115 

A. tragic part was assigned to Punch in one of Rowland 
Dixon's pieces, and that one of tlie most popular, being the 
celebrated tragedy of Jane Shore. The beadle m this piece, 
after proclaiming in obvious and opprobrious rhyme the 
offence which had drawn upon Mistress Shore this public 
punishment, prohibited all persons from relieving her on 
pain of death, and turned her out, according to the common 
story, to die of hunger in the streets. The only person who 
ventured to disobey this prohibition was Punch the baker; 
and the reader may judge of the dialogue of these pieces by 
this baker's words, when he stole behind her, and nudging 
her furtively while he spake, ofTered her a loaf, saying, " Tak 
it Jenny, tak it!'" for which act, so little consonant with his 
general character, Punch died a martyr to humanity by the 
hangman's hands. 

Dr. Dove used to say he doubted whether Garrick and 
Mrs. Gibber could have affected him more in middle life, 
than he had been moved by Punch the baker, and this 
wooden Jane Shore in his boyhood. For rude as were these 
performances, (and nothing could possibly be ruder,) the 
effect on infant minds was prodigious, from the accompany- 
ing sense of wonder, an emotion which of all others is at 
that time of life the most delightful. Here was miracle in 
any quantity to be seen for twopence, and be believed in for 
nothing. No matter how confined the theatre, how coarse 
and inartificial the scenery, or how miserable the properties; 
the mind supplied all that was wanting. 

" Mr. Guy," said young Daniel to the schoolmaster, after 
one of these performances, " I wish Rowland Dixon could 
perform one of our Latin dialogues!" 

" Ay, Daniel," replied the schoolmaster, entering into the 
boy's feelings; '• it would be a grand thing to have the Three 
Fatal Sisters introduced, and to have them send for Death ; 
and then for Death to summon the Pope and jugulate him; 
and invite the Emperor and the King to dance ; and disarm 
the soldier, and pass sentence upon the Judge ; and stop the 
Lawyer's tongue ; and feel the Physician's pulse ; and make 
the Cook come to be killed ; and send the Poet to the 
shades ; and give the Drunkard his last draught. And then 
to have Rhadamanthus come in and try them all ! Methinks, 
Daniel, that would beat Jane Shore and Fair Rosamond all 
to nothing, and would be as good as a sermon to boot." 

"1 believe it would indeed !" said the boy: "and then to 
see Mors and Natuua ; and have Damnatus called up ; and 
the three cacodemons at supper upon the sirloin of a king, 
and the roasted doctor of divinity, and the cruel school- 
master's rump! Would not it be nice, Mr. Guy]" 

"The pity is, Daniel," replied Guy, " that Rowland Dixon 
is no Laliner, any more than those who go to see his per- 
formances." 
6 



116 THE DOCTOR. 

" But could not you put it into English for him, Mr. Guy T' 
" I am afraid, Daniel, Rowland Dixon would not thank me 
for my pains. Besides, 1 could never make it sound half so 
noble in English as in those grand Latin verses, which fill 
the mouth, and the ears, and the mind — ay, and the heart 
and soul too. No, boy ! schools are the proper places for 
representing such pieces ; and, if I had but Latiners enough, 
we would have them ourselves. But there are not many 
houses, my good Daniel, in which learning is held in such 
esteem as it is at thy father's : if there were, I should have 
more Latin scholars ; and, what is of far more consequence, 
the world would be wiser and better than it is !" 



CHAPTER XXIV. P. I. 

QUACK AND NO QUACK, BEING AN ACCOUNT OF DR. GREEN AND HIS 
MAN KEMP — POPULAR MEDICINE, HERBARY, THEORY OF SIGNA- 
TURES, WILLIAM DOVE, JOHN WESLEY, AND B.VXTER. 

Hold thy hand ! health's dear maintainer ; 
Life perchance may burn the stronger : 
Having substance to maintain her, 
She untouched may last the longer. 
When the artist goes about 
To redress her flame, I doubt 
Oftentimes he snuffs it out. 

QPARLES. 

It was not often that Rowland Dixon exhibited at Ingle- 
ton. He took his regular circuits to the fairs in all the sur- 
rounding country far and wide ; but, in the intervals of his 
vocation, he who, when abroad, was the servant of the public, 
became his own master at home. His puppets were laid up 
in ordinary, the voice of Punch ceased, and the master of the 
motions enjoyed otium cum dignitate. When he favoured his 
friends and neighbours with an exhibition, it was speciali 
graiiA, and in a way that rather enhanced that dignity than 
derogated from it. 

A performer of a very different kind used in those days to 
visit Ingleton, in his rounds, where his arrival was always 
expected by some of the community with great anxiety. 
This was a certain Dr. Green, who, having been regularly 
educated for the profession of medicine, and regularly gradu- 
ated in it, chose to practise as an itinerant, and take the field 
with a merry-andrew for his aid-de-camp. He was of a re- 
spectable and wealthy family in the neighbourhood of Don- 
caster, which neighbourhood, on their account, he never ap- ' 
proached in his professional circuits ; though for himself he 



THE DOCTOR. 117 

was far from being ashamed of the character that he had as- 
sumed. The course which he had taken had been deliber- 
ately chosen, with the twofold object of gratifying- his own 
humour and making a fortune ; and in the remoter, as well 
as in the immediate purpose, he succeeded to his heart's 
content. 

It is not often that so much worldly prudence is found con- 
nected with so much eccentricity of character. A French 
poetess, Madame de Villedieu, taking as a text for some 
verses the liberal maxim Que la vertu depend autant du tem- 
perament que des loix, says — 

" Presque toujours chacun suit son caprice ; 
Heureux est le mortel que les destins amis 
Ont partage d'un caprice permis." 

He is indeed a fortunate man who, if he must have a hobby- 
horse — which is the same as saying if he will have one — 
keeps it not merely for pleasure, but for use, breaks it in 
well, has it entirely under command, and gets as much 
work out of it as he could have done out of a common road- 
ster. Dr. Green did this : he had not taken to this strange 
course because he was impatient of the restraints of society, 
but because he fancied that his constitution, both of body 
and of mind, required an erratic life, and that, within certain 
bounds which he prescribed for himself, he might indulge in 
it, both to his own advantage, and that of the community; 
that part of the community, at least, among whom it would 
be his lot to labour. Our laws had provided itinerant courts 
of justice for the people. Our church had formerly provided 
itinerant preachers ; and after the Reformation, when the 
mendicant orders were abolished, by whom this service used 
to be performed, such preachers have never failed to appear 
during the prevalence of any religious influenza. Dr. Green 
thought that itinerant physicians were wanted ; and that, if 
practitioners regularly educated and well qualified would 
condescend to such a course, the poor ignorant people 
would no longer be cheated by travelling quacks, and some- 
times poisoned by them! 

One of the most reprehensible arts to which the reformers 
resorted in their hatred of popery, was that of adapting vul- 
gar verses to church tunes, and thus associating, with ludi- 
crous images, or with something worse, melodies which had 
formerly been held sacred. It is related of Whitefield, that 
he, making a better use of the same device, fitted hymns to 
certain popular airs, because, he said, " there was no reason 
why the devil should keep all the good tunes to himself." 
Green acted upon a similar principle when \vq took the field 
as a physician errant, with his man Kemp, like another 
Sancho, for his squire. But the doctor was no Quixote ; 



118 THE DOCTOR. 

and his merry-andrew had all Sancho's shrewdness, without 
any alloy of his simpleness. 

In those times medical knowledge among the lower practi- 
tioners was at the lowest point. Except in large towns the 
people usually trusted to domestic medicine, which some 
Lady Bountiful administered from her family receipt book; 
or to a village doctress, whose prescriptions were as likely 
sometimes to be dangerously active as at others to be ridicu- 
lous and inert. But while they held to their garden physic, 
it was seldom that any injury was done, either by exhibiting 
wrong medicines or violent ones. 

Herbs, woods, and springs, the power that in you lies, 
If mortal man could know your properties !* 

There was at one time abundant faith in those properties. 
The holy shepherdess in Fletcher's fine pastoral drama, 
which so infinitely surpasses all foreign compositions of that 
class, thus apostrophizes the herbs which she goes out to 
cull:— 

" Oh you best sons of earth, 
You only brood unto whose happy birth 
Virtue was given, holding more of nature 
Than man, her firstborn and most perfect creature. 
Let me adore you, you that only can 
Help or kill nature, drawing out that span 
Of hfe and breath even to the end of time !" 

So abundantly was the English garden stocked in the age of 
the Tudors, that Tusser, after enumerating in an appendix to 
one of his chapters two-and-forty herbs for the kitchen, four- 
teen others for sallads or sauces, eleven to boil or butter, 
seventeen as strewing herbs, and forty '' herbs, branches, and 
flowers for windows and pots," adds a list of seventeen herbs 
" to still in summer," and of five-and-twenty " necessary 
herbs to grow in the garden for physic, not rehearsed before ;" 
and after all advises his readers to seek more in the field. 
He says — 

" The nature of flowers Dame Physic doth shew ; 
She teacheth them all to be know^n to a few." 

Elsewhere he observes that 

"The knowledge of stilling is one pretty feat, 
The waters be wholesome, the charges not great." 

In a comedy of Lord Digby's, written more than a hundred 
years after Tusser's didactics, one of the scenes is laid in a 
lady's laboratory, " with a fountain in it, some stills, and 
many shelves, wdth pots of porcelain and glasses ;" ajid when 

* Fletcher. 



THE DOCTOR. 119 

the lady wishes to keep her attendant out of the way, she 
sends her there, saying 

" I have a task to give you — carefully 
To shift the oils in the perfuming room, 
As in the several ranges you shall see 
The old begin to wither. To do it well 
Will take you up some hours, but 'tis a work 
I oft perform myself," 

And Tusser, among " the points of housewifery united to the 
comfort of husbandry," includes good housewifely physic, as 
inculcated in these rhymes : — 

" Good housewife provides ere an sickness do come. 
Of sundry good things in her house to have some ; 
Good aqua composita, and vinegar tart, 
Rose water, and treacle to comfort the heart ; 
Cold herbs in her garden for agues that burn, 
That overstrong heat to good temper may turn ; 
White endive, and succory, with spinage enow. 
All such with good pot herbs should follow the plough. 
Get water of fumitory Liver to cool. 
And others the like, or else go hke a fool ; 
Conserves of barberry, quinces and such. 
With syrups that easeth the sickly so much." 

Old Gervase Markham, in his " approved book called the 
English Housewife, containing the inward and outward 
virtues which ought to be in a complete woman," places her 
skill in physic as one of the most principal ; " you shall un- 
derstand,"' he says, " that sith the preservation and care of 
the family touching their health and soundness of body con- 
sisteth most in her diligence, it is meet that she have a phy- 
sical kind of knowledge, how to administer any wholesome 
receipts or medicines for the good of their healths, as well 
to prevent the first occasion of sickness, as to take away the 
effects and evil of the same, when it hath made seizure upon 
the body." And " as it must be confessed that the depths 
and secrets of this most excellent art of physic are far be- 
yond the capacity of the most skilful woman," he relates for 
the housewife's use some " approved medicines and old doc- 
trines, gathered together by two excellent and famous phy- 
sicians, and in a manuscript given to a great worthy countess 
of this land." 

The receipts collected in this and other books for domestic 
practice are some of them so hypercomposite that even Tus- 
ser's garden could hardly supply all the indigenous ingredients ; 
others are of the most fantastic kind, and for the most part 
they were as troublesome in preparation, and many of them 
as disgusting, as they were futile. That " sovereign water" 
which was invented by Dr. Stephens was composed of almost 
all known spices, and all savoury and odorous herbs, distilled 



120 THE DOCTOR. 

in Claret, With this Dr. Stephens " preserved his own lile 
until such extreme old age that he could neither go nor ride ; 
and he did continue his life, being bedrid five years, when 
other physicians did judge he could not live one year ; and 
he confessed a little before his death, that if he were sick 
at any time, he never used anything but tliis water only. 
And also the Archbishop of Canterbury used it, and found 
such goodness in it that he lived till he was not able to drink 
out of a cup, but sucked his drink through a hollow pipe of 
silver." 

Twenty-nine plants were used in the composition of Dr. 
Adrian Gilbert's most sovereign cordial water, besides harts- 
horn, figs, raisins, gillyflowers, cowslips, marygolds, blue 
violets, red rose buds, ambergris, bezoar stone, sugar, aniseed, 
liquorice, and to crown all, "what else you please." But 
then it was sovereign against all fevers ; and one who in time 
of plague should take two spoonfuls of it in good beer, or 
white wine, " he might walk safely from danger, by the leave 
of God." The water of life was distilled from nearly as 
many ingredients, to which were added a fleshy running 
capon, the loins and legs of an old coney, the red flesh of the 
sinews of a leg of mutton, four young chickens, twelve larks, 
the yelks of twelve eggs, and a loaf of white bread, all to be 
distilled in white wine. 

For consumption there were pills in which powder of 
pearls, of white amber and of coral, were the potential ingre- 
dients ; there was cock water, the cock being to be chased 
and beaten before he was killed, or else plucked alive ! and 
there was a special water procured by distillation, from a 
peck of garden shell snails and a quart of earth worms, be- 
sides other things ; this was prescribed, not for consumption 
alone, but for dropsy and all obstructions. For all faintness, 
hot agues, heavy fantasies, and imaginations, a cordial was 
prepared in tabulates, which were called Manus Christi : the 
true receipt required one ounce of prepared pearls to twelve 
of fine sugar, boiled with rose water, violet water, cinnamon 
water, "or howsoever one would have them." But apothe- 
caries seldom used more than a drachm of pearls to a pound 
of sugar, because men would not go to the cost thereof ; and 
the Manus Christis simplex was made without any pearl at 
all. For broken bones, bones out of joint, or any grief in 
the bones or sinews, oil of swallows was pronounced exceed- 
ingly sovereign, and this was to be procured by pounding 
twenty live swallows in a mortar with about as many dif- 
ferent herbs ! A mole, male or female according to the sex 
of the patient, was to be dried in an oven whole as taken out 
of the earth, and administered in powder for the falling evil. 
A gray eel with a white belly was to be closed in an earthen 
pot, and buried alive in a dunghill, and at the end of a fort- 
night its oil might be collected to " help hearing." A mix- 



THE DOCTOR. 12j 

tjre of rose leaves and pigeon's dung quilted in a bag, and 
laid hot upon the parts affected, was thought to help a stitch 
in the side ; and for the quinsy, " give the party to drink," 
says Markham, " the herb mouse-ear, steeped in ale or beer ; 
and look vi^hen you see a swine rub himself, and there upon 
the same place rub a slick stone, and then with it slick all the 
swelling, and it will cure it." 

To make hair grow on a bald part of the head, garden 
snails were to be plucked out of their houses, and pounded 
with horse leeches, bees, wasps, and salt, an equal quantity 
of each ; and the baldness was to be anointed with the mois- 
ture from this mixture after it had been buried eight days in 
a hotbed. For the removal and extirpation of superfluous 
hairs, a depilatory was to be made by drowning in a pint of 
wine as many green frogs as it would cover, (about twenty 
was the number,) setting the pot forty days in the sun, and 
then straining it for use. 

A water specially good against gravel or dropsy might be dis- 
tilled from the dried and pulverized blood of a black buck or he 
goat, three or four years old. The animal was to be kept by 
himself, in the summertime when the sun was in Leo, and 
dieted for three weeks upon certain herbs given in prescribed 
order, and to drink nothing but red wine, if you would have 
the best preparation, though some persons allowed him his 
fill of water every third day. But there was a water of 
man's blood which in Queen Elizabeth's days was a new in- 
vention, " whereof some princes had very great estimation, 
and used it for to remain thereby in their force, and, as they 
thought, to live long." A strong man was to be chosen, in 
his flourishing youth, and of twenty-five years, and some- 
what choleric by nature. He was to be well dieted for one 
month with light and healthy meats, and with all kinds of 
spices, and with good strong wine, and moreover to be kept 
with mirth ; at the month's end, veins in both arms were to 
be opened, and as much blood to be let out as he could " tol- 
erate and abide." One handful of salt was to be added to 
six pounds of this blood, and this was to be seven times dis- 
tilled, pouring the water upon the residuum after every dis- 
tillation, till the last. This was to be taken three or four 
times a year, an ounce at a time. One has sight of a the- 
ory here ; the life was thought to be in the blood, and to be 
made transferable, when thus extracted. 

Richard Brathwait, more famous since Mr. Haslewood 
has identified him with Drunken Barnaby, than as author of 
" The English Gentleman and the EngUsh Gentlewoman, pre- 
sented to present times for ornaments, and commended to 
posterity for precedents," says of this gentlewoman, " Herbals 
she peruseth, which she seconds with conference ; and by 
degrees so improves her knowledge, as her cautelous care 
perfits many a dangerous cure." But herbals were not bet- 



122 THE DOCTOR. 

ter guides than the medical books of which specimens have 
just been set before the reader, except that they did not lead 
the practiiioner so widely and perilously astray. " Had Sol- 
omon," says the auttior of Adam in Eden, or tkie Paradise of 
Plants, " that great proficient in all sublunary experiments, 
preserved those many volumes that he wrote in this kind, for 
the instruction of future ages, so great was that spaciousness 
of mind that God had bestowed on him, that he had imme- 
diately under the Deity been the greatest of doctors for the 
preservation of mankind : but with the loss of his books, so 
much lamented by the rabbins and others, the best part of 
this herbarary art hath since groaned under the defects of 
many unworthy authors, and still remains under divers 
clouds and imperfections." This writer, "the ingeniously 
learned and excellent herbarist Mr. William Coles," pro- 
fes^iing as near as possible to acquaint all sorts of people 
with the very pith and marrow of herbarism, arranges his 
work according to the anatomical application of plants, "■' ap- 
propriating," says he, " to every part of the body (from the 
crown of the head, with which 1 begin, and proceed till I 
come to the sole of the foot) such herbs and plants whose 
grand uses and virtues do most specifically, and by signature 
thereunto belong, not only for strengthening the same, but 
also for curing the evil effects whereunto they are s-ibject- 
ed : the signatures being as it were the books out of which 
the ancients first learned the virtue of herbs; nature, or 
rather the God of nature, having stamped on divers of them 
legible characters to discover their uses, though he hath left 
others without any, that after he had showed them the way, 
they, by their labour and industry, which renders everything 
more acceptable, might find out the rest." It was an opinion 
often expressed by a physician of great and deserved celeb- 
rity, that in course of time, specifics would be discovered 
for every malady to which the human frame is liable. He 
never supposed (though few men have ever been more san- 
guine in their hopes and expectations) that life was thus to 
be indefinitely prolonged, and that it would be man's own 
fault, or his own choice, if he did not live for ever ; but he 
thought that when we should thus have been taught to sub- 
due those diseases which cut oui life short, we should, hke 
the patriarchs, live out the number of our days and then fall 
asleep — man being by this physical redemption restored to 
his original corporeal state. 

Then shall, like four straight pillars, the four elements 

Support the goodly structure of mortality ; 

Then shall the four complexions, like four heads 

Of a clear river, streaming in his body, 

Nourish and comfort every vem and sinew : 

No sickness of contagion, no grim death, 

Or deprivation of health's real blessings, 



THE DOCTOR. 123 

Shall then affright the creature, built by Heaven, 
Reserved for immortality.* 

He had not taken up this notion from any religious feel- 
ing; it was connected in him with the pride of philosophy, 
and he expected that this was one of the blessings which we 
were to obtain in the progress of knowledge. 

Some specific remedies being known to exist, it is indeed 
reasonable to suppose that others will be found. Old theo- 
rists went further ; and in a world which everywhere bears 
such undeniable evidences of design in everything, few the- 
ories should seem more likely to be favourably received than 
the one which supposed that every healing plant bears, in 
some part of its structure, the type or signature of its pecu- 
liar virtues : now this could in no other way be so obviously 
marked, as by a resemblance to that part of the human frame 
for which its remedial uses were intended. There is a fable, 
indeed, which says that he who may be so fortunate as to taste 
the blood of a certain unknown animal, would be enabled 
thereby to hear the voice of plants and understand their 
speech ; and if he were on a mountain at sunrise, he might 
hear the herbs which grow there, when freshened with the 
dews of night they open themselves to the beams of the morn- 
ing, return thanks to the Creator for the virtues with which 
he has endued them, each specifying what those virtues were, 
le quali veramenie son tante e tali che beaii i pastori che quelle 
capessero. A botanical writer who flourished a little before 
the theory of signatures was started complains that herbal 
medicine had fallen into disuse; he says, '^ Antequam chemia 
patrum nostrorum memorici orbi restitueretur, contenti vivcbant 
Si TcSv larpuiv Koiiipdi Kai x^P^i^TaToi phamiacis €X vegetabUiuiJi regno 
accersilis parurn solliciti de Soils sulphure et oleo, de LuncB sate et 
essentia^ de Saturni saccaro, de Marlis t.inctura et croco, de vit- 
riolo Feneris, de Mercurio prcscipitato, et Antimonii Jioribus, de 
Sidphuris spirilu et Tariari crysLallis : nihilominus mascule 
debellabant morbos, et tute et jucunde. jYunc sceculi nostri in- 
Jelicitas est, quod vegelabilibus contemptim habitis, plerique 
nihil aliud spirant prcBter metallica ista, et extis parata horri- 
btlia secreta.""^ The new theory came in timely aid of the 
Galenists ; it connected their practice with a doctrine hardly 
less mysterious than those of the Paracelsists, but more 
plausible because it seemed immediately intelligible, and had 
a natural religious feeling to strengthen and support it. 

The author of Adam in Eden refers to Oswald Crollius as 
" the great discoverer of signatures," and no doubt has 
drawn from him most of his remarks upon this theory of 
physical correspondence. The resemblance is in some 
cases very obvious ; but in many more the Swedenborgian 

♦ Ford. 

t Petri Laurembergii Rostochiensis Horticultura— Praeloquium, p. 10. 
6* 



124 THE DOCTOR. 

correspondences are not more fantastic ; and where the re- 
semblances exist the inference is purely theoretical. 

Walnuts are said to have the perfect signature of the head ; 
the outer husk or green covering represents the pericranium, 
or outward skin of the scull, whereon the hair groweth : 
and therefore salt made of those husks is exceedingly good for 
wounds in the head. The inner woody shell hath the signa- 
ture of the scullj and the little yellow skin or peel, that of 
the dura and pia mater which are the thin scarfs that envelope 
the brain. The kernel hath " the very figure of the brain ; 
and therefore it is very profitable for the brain, and resists 
poisons." So, too, the piony, being not yet blown, was 
thought to have " some signature and proportion with the 
head of man, having sutures and little veins dispersed up 
and down, like unto those which environ the brain: when 
the flowers blow they open an outward little skin represent- 
ing the scull:" the piony, therefore, besides its other virtues, 
was very available against the falling sickness. Poppy heads 
with their crowns somewhat represent the head and brain, 
and therefore decoctions of them were used with good suc- 
cess in several diseases of the head. And lilies of the valley, 
which in Coles's days grew plentifully upon Hampstead 
heath, were known by signature to cure the apoplexy ; " for 
as that disease is caused by the dropping of humours into 
the principal ventricles of the brain, so the flowers of this 
lily hanging on the plants as if they were drops, are of won- 
derful use herein." 

All capillary herbs were of course sovereign in diseases 
of the hair ; and because the purple and yellow spots and 
stripes upon the flowers of eyebright very much resemble the 
appearance of diseased eyes, it was found out by that signa- 
ture that this herb was very effectual "for curing of the 
same." The small stonecrop hath the signature of the 
gums, and is therefore good for scurvy. The exquisite Crol- 
lius observed that the woody scales of which the cones of 
the pine tree are composed, resemble the fore teeth ; and 
therefore pine leaves boiled in vinegar make a gargle which 
relieves the toothache. The pomegranate has a like virtue 
for a like reason. Thistles and holly leaves signify by their 
prickles that they are excellent for pleurisy and stitches in 
the side. Saxifrage manifesteth in its growth its power of 
breaking the stone. It had been found experimentally that 
all roots, barks, and flowers which were yellow, cured the 
yellow jaundice ; and though kidney beans as yet were only 
used for food, yet, having so perfect a signature, practition- 
ers in physic were exhorted to take it into consideration, 
and try whether there were not in this plant some excellent 
faculty to cure nephritic diseases. In pursuing this fantastic 
system examples might be shown of that mischief which, 
though it may long remain latent, never fails at some time 



THE DOCTOR. 125 

or other to manifest itself as inherent in all error and false- 
hood. 

When the mistresses of families grounded their practice 
of physic upon such systems of herbary, or took it from 
books which contained prescriptions like those before ad- 
duced, (few being either more simple or more rational,) Dr. 
Green might well argue that when he mounted his hobby 
and rode out seeking adventures as a physician errant, he 
went forth for the benefit of his fellow-creatures. The 
guidance of such works, or of their own traditional receipts, 
the people in fact then generally followed. Burton tells us 
that Paulus Jovius, in his description of Britain, and Levinus 
Lemnius, have observed, of this our island, how there was 
of old no use of physic among us, and but little at this day, 
except, he says, " it be for a few nice idle citizens, surfeiting 
courtiers, and stall-fed gentlemen lubbers. The country 
people use kitchen physic." There are two instances among 
the papers of the Berkeley family, of the httle confidence 
which persons of rank placed upon such medical advice and 
medicinal preparations as could be obtained in the country, 
and even in the largest of our provincial cities. In the second 
year of Elizabeth's reign, Henry, Lord Berkeley " having 
extremely heated himself by chasing on foot a lame deer in 
Yate Park, with the violence thereof fell into an immoderate 
bleeding of the nose, to stay which, by the ill counsel of 
some about him, he dipped his whole face into a basin of cold 
water, whereby," says the family chronicler, " that flush and 
fulness of his nose which forthwith arose could never be 
remedied, though for present help he had physicians in a few 
days from London, and for better help came thither himself 
not long after to have the advice of the whole college, and 
lodged with his mother at her house in Shoe-lane." He 
never afterward could sing -with truth or satisfaction the 
old song — 

"Nose, nose, jolly red nose, 
And what gave thee that jolly red nose ? 
Cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs and cloves, 
And they gave me this jolly red nose." 

A few years later, " Langham, an Irish footman of this lord, 
upon the sickness of the Lady Catharine, this lord's wife, 
carried a letter from Callowdon to old Dr. Fryer, a physician 
dwelling in Little Britain in London ; and returned with a 
glass bottle in his hand, compounded by the doctor for the 
recovery of her health, a journey of a hundred and forty- 
eight miles, performed by him in less than forty-two hours, 
notwithstanding his stay of one night at the physician's and 
apothecary's houses, which no one horse could have so well 
and safely performed." No doubt it was for the safer con- 
veyance of the bottle, that a footman was sent on this special 



126 THE DOCTOR. 

errand, for which, the historian of that noble family adds, 
*' the lady shall after give him a new suit of clothes." 

In those days, and long after, they who required remedies 
were likely to fare ill, under their own treatment, or that of 
their neighbours ; and worse under the travelling quack, who 
was always an ignorant and impudent impostor, but found 
that human sufferings an'd human credulity afforded him a 
D-vcr- failing harvest. Dr. Green knew this: he did not say 
with the Romish priest, populus viilt decipi, et decipielnr! for 
he had no inlentionof deceiving them ; but he saw that many 
were to be won by buffoonery, more by what is called pala- 
ve?; and almost all by pretensions. Condescending, there- 
fore, to the common arts of quackery, he employed his man 
Kemp to tickle the multitude with coarse wit ; but he stored 
himself with the best drugs that were to be procured, dis- 
tributed as general remedies such only as could hardly be 
misapplied and must generally prove serviceable ; and brought 
to particular cases the sound knowledge which he had ac- 
quired in the school of Boerhaave, and the skill which he 
had derived from experience aided by natural sagacity. 
When it became convenient for him to have a home, he 
established himself at Penrith, in the county of Cumberland, 
having married a lady of that place ; but he long continued 
his favourite conrse of life, and accumulated in it a large 
fortune. He gained it by one maggot, and reduced it by 
many ; nevertheless there remained a handsome inheritance 
for his children. His son proved as maggoty as the father, 
ran through a good fortune, and when confined in the King's 
Bench prison for debt, wrote a book upon the art of cheap 
living in London ! 

The father's local fame, though it has not reached to the 
third and fourth generation, survived him far into the second ; 
and for many years after his retirement from practice, and 
even after his death, every travelling mountebank in the north- 
ern counties adopted the name of Dr. Greeii. 

At the time to which this chapter refers, Dr. Green was in 
his meridian career, and enjoyed the highest reputation 
throughout the sphere of his itinerancy. Ingleton lay in his 
rounds, and whenever he came there he used to send for the 
schoolmaster to pass the evening with him. He was always 
glad if he could find an opportunity also of conversing with 
the elder Daniel, as the flossofer of those parts. William 
Dove could have communicated to him more curious things 
relating to his own art ; but W' iUiam kept out of the presence 
of strangers, and had happily no ailments to make him seek 
the doctor's advice ; his occasional indispositions were but 
slight, and he treated them in his own way. That way 
was sometimes merely superstitious, sometimes it was 
whimsical, and sometimes rough. If his charms failed 
when he tried them upon himself, it was not for want of 



THE DOCTOR. 127 

faith. When at any time it happened that one of his eyes 
was bloodshot, he went forthwith in search of some urchin 
whose mother, either from laziness or in the belief thai it 
was wholesome to have it in that state, allowed his ragged 
head to serve as a free warren for certain " small deer." One 
of these hexapeds William secured, and " using him as if he 
loved him," put it into his eye ; when, according to Wil- 
liam's account, the insect fed upon what it found, cleared 
the eye, and disappearing he knew not where nor how, never 
was seen more. 

His remedy for the colic was a pebble posset ; white 
pebbles were preferred, and of these what was deemed a 
reasonable quantity was taken in some sort of milk porridge. 
Upon the same theory he sometimes swallowed a pebble large 
enough, as he said, to clear all before it ; and for that purpose 
they have been administered of larger cahbre than any bolus 
that ever came from the hands of the most merciless apoth- 
ecary, as large, indeed, sometimes, as a common sized walnut. 
Does the reader hesitate at believing this of an ignorant man, 
living in a remote part of the country? Well might William 
Dove be excused, for, a generation later than his, John Wes- 
ley in his primitive physic prescribed quicksilver, to be taken 
ounce by ounce, to the amount of one, two, or three pounds, 
till the desired effect Was produced. And a generation 
earlier, Richard Baxter, of happy memory and unhappy 
digestion, having read in Dr. Gerhard "the admirable effects 
of the swallowing of a gold bullet upon his father," in a chsp 
which Baxter supposed to be like his own, got a gold bulled 
of between twenty and thirty shillings weight, and swallowed 
it. " Having taken it," says he, " 1 knew not how to be 
de''vered of it again. I took clysters and purges for about 
three weeks, but nothing stirred it ; and a gentleman having 
done the like, the bullet never came from him till he died, 
and it was cut out. But at last my neighbours set a day 
apart to fast and pray for me, and 1 was freed from my &dit 
ger in the beginning of that day." 



128 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER XXV. P. I. 

Hiatus valde lacrymahihs. 

Time flies away fast, 
The while we never remember 

How soon our life here 

Grows old with the year 
That dies with the next December ! 

Herrick. 

I MUST pass over fourteen years, for were I to pursue the 
history of our young Daniel's boyhood and adolescence into 
all the ramifications which a faittiful biography requires, four- 
teen volumes would not contain it. They would be worth 
reading, for that costs little ; they would be worth writing, 
though that costs much. They would deserve the best em- 
bellishments that the pencil and the graver could produce. 
The most poetical of artists would be worthily emi)loyed in 
designing the sentimental and melancholy scenes; Cruik- 
shank for the grotesque ; Wilkie and Richter for the comic 
and serio-comic; Turner for the actual scenery; Bewick for 
the head and tail pieces. They ought to be written ; they 
ought to be read. They should be written, and then they 
would be read. But time is wanting : 

" Eheu ! fugaces posthume, posthume, 
Labuntur anni !" 

and time is a commodity of which the value rises as long as 
we live. We must be contented with doing, not what we 
wish, but what we can — our possible, as the French call it. 

One of our poets (which is it ]) speaks of an everlasting now. 
If such a condition of existence were offered to us in this 
world, and it were put to the vote whether we should accept 
the offer, and fix all things immutably as they are, who are 
they whose voices would be given in the aflirmative ? 

Not those who are in pursuit of fortune, or of fame, or of 
knowledge, or of enjoyment, or of happiness ; though with 
regard to all of these, as far as any of ihem are attainable, 
there is more pleasure in the pursuit than in the attainment 

Not those who are at sea, or travelling in a stage coach. 

Not the man who is shaving himself. 

Not those who have the toothache, or who are having a 
tooth drawn. 

The fashionable beauty might, and the fashionable singer, 



THE DOCTOR. 129 

and the fashionable opera dancer, and the actor who is in the 
height of his power and reputation. So might the alderman 
at a city feast. So would the heir who is squandering a large 
fortune faster than it was accumulated for him. And the 
thief who is not taken, and the convict who is not hanged, 
and the scoffer at religion whose heart belies his tongue. 

Not the wise and the good. 

Not those who are in sickness or in sorrow. 

Not I. 

But were I endowed with the power of suspending the 
effect of time upon the things around me, methinks there are 
some of my flowers which should neither fall nor fade : 
decidedly my kitten should never attain to cathood ; and I 
am afraid my little boy would continue to " misspeak half- 
uttered words ;" and never, while I live, outgrow that epicene 
dress of French gray, half European, half Asiatic in its 
fashion. 



CHAPTER XXVI. P. I. 

DANIEL AT DONCASTER ; THE REASON WHY HE WAS DESTINED 
FOB THE MEDICAL PROFESSION RATHER THAN HOLY ORDERS ; 
AND SOME REMARKS UPON SERMONS. 

Je ne veux dissimuler, amy lecteur, que je n'aye bien preveu, et me tiens 
pour deiiement adverty, que ne puis eviter la reprehension d'aucuns, et les 
calomnies de plusieurs— ausquels c'est escrit desplaira du tout. — Chris- 

TOFLE DE HeKICOURT. 

Fourteen years have elapsed since the scene took place 
which is related in the twenty-second chapter : and Daniel 
the younger, at the time to which this present chapter refers, 
was residing at Doncaster with Peter Hopkins, who prac- 
tised the medical art in all its branches. He had lived with 
him eight years, first as a pupil, latterly in the capacity of 
an assistant, and afterward as an adopted successor. 

How this connection between Daniel and Peter Hopkins 
was brought about, and the circumstances which prepared 
the way for it, would have appeared in some of the non-ex- 
istent fourteen volumes, if it had pleased fate that they should 
have been written. 

Some of my readers, and especially those who pride them- 
selves upon their knowledge of the world, or their success 
in it, will think it strange, perhaps, that the elder Daniel, when 
he resolved to make a scholar of his son, did not determine 
upon breeding him either to the church or the law, in either 
of which professions the way was easier and more inviting. 



130 THE DOCTOR. 

Now though this will not appear strange to thos« other 
readers who have perceived that the father had no know- 
ledge of the world, and could have none, it is nevertheless 
proper to enter into some explanation upon that point. 

If George Herbert's Temple, or his Remains, or his Hfe by 
old Izaak Walton, had all or any of them happened to be 
among those few but precious books which Daniel prized so 
highly and so well, it is likely that the wish of his heart 
would have been to train up his son for a priest to the tem- 
ple. But so it was, that none of his reading was of a kind 
to give his thoughts that direction ; and he had not conceived 
any exalted opinion of the clergy from the specimens which 
had fallen in his way. A contempt which was but too gen- 
eral had been brought upon the order by the ignorance or the 
poverty of a great number of its members. The person who 
served the humble church which Daniel dutifully attended 
was almost as poor as a capuchin, and quite as ignorant. 
This poor man had obtained in evil hour from some easy or 
careless bishop a license to preach. It was reprehensible 
enough to have ordained one who was destitute of every 
qualification that the office requires; the fault was still 
greater in promoting him from the desk to the pulpit. 

"A very great scholar," is quoted by Dr. Eachard, as 
saying, " that such preaching as is usual is a hinderance of 
salvation rather than the means to it." This was said when 
the fashion of conceited preaching which is satirised in Frey 
Gerundio had extended to England, and though that fashion 
has so long been obsolete that many persons will be surprised 
to hear it had ever existed among us, it may still reason- 
ably be questioned whether sermons such as they commonly 
are, do not quench more devotion than they kindle. 

My lord ! put not the book aside in displeasure ! (I ad 
dress myself to whatever bishop may be reading it.) Un 
biased I will not call myself, for I am a true and orthodox 
churchman, and have the interests of the church zealously 
at heart, because I believe and know them to be essentially 
and inseparably connected with those of the commonwealth. 
But I have been an attentive observer, and as such, request 
a hearing. Receive my remarks as coming from one whose 
principles are in entire' accord with your lordship's, whose 
wishes have the same scope and purport, and who, while he 
offers his honest opinion, submits it with proper humility to 
your judgment. 

The founder of the English church did not intend that the 
sermon should invariably form apart of the Sunday services. 
It became so in condescension to the Puritans, of whom it 
has long been the fashion to speak with respect, instead of 
holding them up to the contempt, and infamy, and abhorrence 
which they have so richly merited. They have been ex- 
tolled by their descendants and successors as models of 



THE DOCTOR. 131 

patriotism and piety ; and the success with which this delu- 
sion has been practised is one of the most reuiarkcible ex- 
amples of what may be effected by dint of effrontery and per- 
severing falsehood. 

That sentence I am certain will not be disapproved at 
Fulham or Lambeth. Dr. Southey or Dr. Phillpots might 
have written it. 

The genera] standard of the clergy has undoubtedly been 
very much raised since the days when they were not allowed 
to preach without a license for that purpose from the ordi- 
nary. Nevertheless it is certain that many persons who are, 
in other and more material respects, well, or even excellently 
qualified for the ministerial functions, may be wanting in 
the qualifications for a preacher. A man may possess great 
learning, sound principles, and good sense, and yet be with- 
out the talent of arranging and expressing his thoughts well 
in a written discourse : he may want the power of fixing the 
attention or reaching the hearts of his hearers ; and in that 
case the discourse, as some old writer has said in serious 
jest, which was designed for edification turns to ^edification. 
The evil was less in Addison's days, when he who distrusted 
his own abilities availed himself of the compositions of some 
approved divine, and was not disparaged in the opinion of 
his congregation, by taking a printed volume into the pulpit. 
This is no longer practised; but instead of this, which 
secured wholesome instruction to the people, sermons are 
manufactured for sale, and sold in manuscript, or printed in 
a cursive type imitating manuscript. The articles which 
are prepared for such a market, are for the most part copied 
from obscure books, with more or less alteration of language, 
and generally for the worse ; and so far as they are drawn 
from such sources they are not likely to contain anything 
exceptionable on the score of doctrine: but the best authors 
will not be resorted to, for fear of discovery, and therefore 
when these are used, the congregation lose as much in point 
of instruction, as he who uses them ought to lose in self-es- 
teem. 

But it is more injurious when a more scrupulous man com- 
poses his own discourses, if he be deficient either in judg- 
ment or learning. He is then more likely to entangle plain 
texts than to unravel knotty ones ; rash positions are some- 
times advanced by such preachers, unsound arguments are ad- 
duced by them in support of momentous doctrines, and though 
these things neither offend the ignorant and careless, nor in- 
jure the well minded and well informed, they carry poison 
with them when they enter a diseased ear. It cannot be 
doubted that such sermons act as corroboratives for infi- 
delity. 

Nor when they contain nothing that is actually erroneous, 
but are merely unimproving, are they in that case altogether 



132 THE DOCTOR. 

harmless. They are not harmless if they are felt to be tedi- 
ous. They are not harmless if they torpify the understand- 
ing : a chill that begins there may extend to the vital regions. 
Bishop Taylor (the great Jeremy) says of devotional books 
that " they are in a large degree the occasion of so great in- 
devolion as prevails among the generality of nominal Chris- 
tians, being," he says, " represented naked in the conclu- 
sions of spiritual life, without or art or learning; and made 
apt for persons who can do nothing but believe and love, 
not for them that can consider and love." This applies 
more forcibly to bad sermons than to commonplace books 
of devotion ; the book may be laid aside if it offend the 
reader's judgment, but the sermon is a positive infliction 
upon the helpless hearer. 

The same bishop — and his name ought to carry with it au- 
thority among the wise and the good — has delivered an opin- 
ion upon this subject, in his admirable apology for authorized 
and set forms of liturgy. " Indeed," he says, "if I may freely 
declare my opinion, I think it were not amiss, if the liberty of 
making sermons were something more restrained than it is; 
and that such persons only were intrusted with the liberty, for 
whom the church herself may be safely responsive — that is, 
men learned and pious ; and that the other part, the vulgus 
clcri, should instruct the people out of the fountains of the 
church and the public stock, till, by so long exercise and dis- 
cipline in the schools of the prophets, they may also be in- 
structed to minister of their own unto the people. This I am 
sure was the practice of the primitive church." 

" I am convinced," said Dr. Johnson, " that I ought to be 
at divine service more frequently than I am ; but the provo- 
cations given by ignorant and affected preachers too often, 
disturb the mental calm which otherwise would succeed to 
prayer. 1 am apt to whisper to myself on such occasions, 
' How can this illiterate fellow dream of fixing attention af- 
ter we have been listening to the sublimest truths, conveyed 
in the most chaste and exalted language, throughout a lit- 
urgy which must be regarded as the genuine offspring of 
piety impregnated by wisdom !' " " Take notice, however," 
he adds, " though I make this confession respecting myself, I 
do not mean to recommend the fastidiousness that sometimes 
leads me to exchange congregational for solitary worship." 

The saintly Herbert says — 

" Judge net the preacher, for he is thy judge ; 
If thou mishke him thou conceiv'st him not. 
God calleth preaching folly. Do not grudge 
To pick out treasures from an earthen pot. 
The worst speak something good. If all want sense, 
God takes a text and preacheth patience. 
He that gets patience, and the blessing which 
Preachers conclude with, hath not lost his pains." 



THE DOCTOR. 133 

This sort of patience was all that Daniel could have derived 
from the discourses of the poor curate ; and it was a lesson 
of which his meek and benign temper stood in no need. Na- 
ture had endowed him with this virtue, and this Sunday dis- 
cipline exercised without strengthening it. While he was, 
in the phrase of the religious public, sitting under the preach- 
er, he obeyed to a certain extent George Herbert's precept — 
that is, he obeyed it as he did other laws with the existence 
of which he was unacquainted — 

" Let vain or busy thoughts have there no part ; 
Bring not thy plough, thy plots, thy pleasure thither." 

Pleasure made no part of his speculations at any time. 
Plots he had none. For the plough, it was what he never 
followed in fancy, patiently as he plodded after the furrow in 
his own vocation. And then for worldly thoughts they were 
not likely in that place to enter a mind, which never at any 
time entertained them. But to that sort of thought (if 
thought it may be called) which cometh as it listeth, and 
which, when the mind is at ease and the body in health, is the 
forerunner and usher of sleep, he certainly gave way. The 
curate's voice passed over his ear like the sound of the brook 
with which it blended, and it conveyed to him as little 
meaning and less feeling. During the sermon, therefore, he 
retired into himself, with as much or as little edification as 
a Quaker finds at a silent meeting. 

It happened, also, that of the few clergy within the very 
narrow circle in which Daniel moved, some were in no good 
repute for their conduct, and none displayed either that zeal 
in the discharge of their pastoral functions, or that earnest- 
ness and ability in performing the service of the church, 
which are necessary for commanding the respect and secu- 
ring the affections of the parishioners. The clerical profess- 
ion had never presented itself to him in its best, which is re- 
ally its true light ; and for that cause he would never have 
thought of it for the boy, even if the means of putting him 
forward in this path had been easier and more obvious than 
they were. And for the dissenting ministry, Daniel liked 
not the name of a nonconformist. The Puritans had left be- 
hind them an ill savour in his part of the country, as they 
had done everywhere else ; and the extravagances of the 
primitive Quakers, which during his childhood were fresh in 
remembrance, had not yet been forgotten. 

It was well remembered in those parts that the Vicar of 
Kirkby Lonsdale, through the malignity of some of his Puri- 
tanical parishioners, had been taken out of his bed — from his 
wife, who was then big with child, and hurried away to Lan- 
caster jail, where he was imprisoned three years for no other 
offence than that of fidelity to his church and his king. And 



134 THE DOCTOR. 

that the man who was a chief instigator of this persecution, 
and had enriched himself by the spoil of his neighbour's 
goods, thougn he flourished for a vvinle, bought a held and 
built a fine house, came to poverty at last, and died in prison, 
having for some time received his daily food there from the 
table of one of this very vicar's sons. It was well remem- 
bered, also, that, in a parish of the adjoining county palatine, 
the Puritanical party had set fire in the night to the rector's 
barns, stable, and parsonage ; and that he and his wife and 
children had only as it w^ere by miracle escaped from the 
flames. 

WiUiam Dove had also among his traditional stores some 
stories of a stranger kind concerning the Quakers, these 
parts of the Norih having been a great scene of their vagaries 
in their early days He used to relate liow one of them 
vv^ent into the church at Brough, during the reign of the 
Puritans, with a white sheet about his body, and a rope about 
his neck, to prophesy before the people and their whig 
priest (as he called him) that the surphce, which was then 
prohibited, should again come into use, and that the gallows 
should have its due ! And how when their ringleader, 
George Fox, was put in prison at Carlisle, the wife of Justice 
Benson would eat no meat unless she partook it with him at 
the bars of his dungeon, declaring she was moved to do this; 
wherefore it was supposed he had bewitched her. And not 
without reason; for when this old George went, as he often 
did, into the church to disturb the people, and they thrust 
him out, and fell upon him and beat him, sparing neither 
sticks nor stones if they came to hand, he was presently, for 
all that they had done to him, as sound and as fresh as if 
nothing had touched him ; and when they tried to kill him, 
they could not take away his Ufe ! And how this old George 
rode a great black horse, upon which he was seen, in the 
course of the same hour, at two places three score miles dis- 
tant from each other ! And how some of the women who fol- 
lowed this old George, used to strip off" all their clothes, and in 
that plight go into the church at service time on the Sunday, to 
bear testimony against the pomps and vanities of the world ; 
*' and to be sure," said Wilham, "they must have been 
witched, or they never would have done this." " Lord 
deliver us !" said Dinah ; "■ to be sure they must !" " To be 
sure they must — Lord bless us all !" said Haggy. 



THE DOCTOR. 135 



CHAPTER XXVII. P. I. 

A PASSAGE IN PROCOPIUS IMPROVED — A STORY CONCERNING URIM 
AND THUMMIM ; AND THE ELDER DANIEL's OPINION OF THE PRO- 
FESSION OF THE LAW. 

Here is Domine Picklock, 
My man of law, solicits all my causes, 
Follows my business, makes and compounds my quarrels 
Between my tenants and tne ; sows all my strifes, 
And reaps them too, troubles the country for me, 
And vexes any neighbour that I please. 

Ben Jonson. 

Among the people who were converted to the Christian 
faith during the sixth century, were two tribes or nations 
called the Lazi and the Zani. Methinks it had been better if 
they had been left unconverted ; for they have multiplied 
prodigiously among us, so that between the Lazy Christians 
and the Zaii)'^ ones, Christianity has grievously suffered. 

It was one of the Zany tribe whom Guy once heard ex- 
plaining to his congregation what was meant by Urim and 
Thummim, and in technical phrase improving the text. 
Urim and Thummim, he said, were two precious stones, or 
rather stones above all price, the Hebrew names of which 
have been interpreted to signify light and perfection, or 
doctrine and judgment, (which Lulher prefers in his Bible, 
and in which some of the Northern versions have followed 
him,) or the shining and the perfect, or manifestation and 
truth, the words in the original being capable of any or all 
of these significations. They were set in the high priest's 
breastplate of judgment ; and when he consulted them upon 
any special occasion to discover the will of God, they dis- 
played an extraordinary brilliancy if the matter which was 
referred to this trial were pleasing to the Lord Jehovah, but 
they gave no lustre if it were disapproved. " My brethren," 
said the preacher, " this is what learned expositors, Jewish 
and Christian, tell me concerning these two precious stones. 
The stones themselves are lost. But, my Christian brethren, 
we need them not, for we have a surer means of consulting 
and discovering the will of God; and still it is by Urim and 
Thummim, if we alter only a single letter in one of those 
mysterious words. Take your Bible, my brethern ; use him 
and thumb him — use him and thumb him well, and you will 
discover the will of God as surely as ever the high priest 
did by the stones in his breastplate .'" 



136 THE DOCTOR. 

What Daniel saw of the Lazi, and what he heard of the 
Zani, prevented him from ever forming a wish to educate his 
son for a north-country cure, which would have been all the 
preferment that lay M^ithin his view. And yet if any person 
to whose judgment he deferred had reminded him that Bishop 
Latimer had risen from as humble an origin, it might have 
awakened in him a feeling of ambition for the boy, not in- 
consistent with his own philosophy. 

But no suggestions could ever have induced Daniel to 
choose for him the profession of the law. The very name 
of lawyer was to him a word of evil acceptation. Montaigne 
has a pleasant story of a little boy, who when his mother 
had lost a lawsuit which he had always heard her speak of 
as a perpetual cause of trouble, ran up to him in great glee, 
to tell him of the loss as a matter for congratulation and joy ; 
the poor child thought it w^as like losing a cough, or any 
other bodily ailment. Daniel entertained the same sort of 
opinion concerning all legal proceedings. He knew that 
laws were necessary evils ; but he thought they were much 
greater evils than there was any necessity that they should 
be ; and believing this to be occasioned by those who were 
engaged in the trade of administering them, he looked upon 
lawyers as the greatest pests in the country — 

Because, their end being merely avarice, 
"Winds up their wits to such a nimble strain 
As helps to blind the judge, not give him eyes.* 

He had once been in the courts at Lancaster, having been 
called upon as a witness in a civil suit, and the manner in 
which he was cross-examined there by one of those " young 
spruce lawyers," whom Donne has so happily characterized 
as being 

" all impudence and tongue," 

had confirmed him in this prejudice. What he saw of the 
proceedings that day induced him to agree with Beaumont 
and Fletcher, that 

Justice was a cheesemonger, a mere cheesemonger, 
Weighed nothing to the world but mites and maggots 
And a main stink : law, like a horse courser. 
Her rules and precepts hung with gauds and ribands, 
And pampered up to cozen him that bought her. 
When she herself was hackney, lame, and founder'd.* 

His was too simple and sincere an understanding to admire 
in any other sense than that of wondering at them. 

Men of that large profession that can speak 
To every cause, and things mere contraries, 

* Lord Brooke. * Woman Pleased. 



THE DOCTOR. 137 

Till they are hoarse again, yet all be law ! 
That with most quick agility can turn 
And re-return : can make knots and undo them, 
Give forked counsel, take provoking gold 
On either hand, and put it up. These men 
He knew would thrive ;* 

but far was he from wishing that a son of his should thrive 
by such a perversion of his intellectual powers, and such a 
corruption of his moral nature. 

On the other hand, he felt a degree of respect amounting 
almost to reverence for the heahng art, which is connected 
with so many mysteries of art and nature. And, therefore, 
when an opportunity offered of placing his son with a respect- 
able practitioner, who he had every reason for believing 
would behave towards him with careful and prudent kind- 
ness, his entire approbation was given to the youth's own 
choice. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. P. I. 

PETER HOPKINS EFFECTS OF TIME AND CHANGE DESCRIPTION 

OF HIS DWELLINGHOUSE. 

Combien de cbangemens depuis que suis au monde, 
Qui n'est qu' un point du terns ! 

• Pasqijier. 

Peter Hopkins was a person who might have suffered 
death by the laws of Solon, if that code had been established 
in this country ; for though he hved in the reigns of George 
1. and George II., he was neither whig nor tory, Hanoverian 
nor Jacobite. When he drank the king's health with any of 
his neighbours, he never troubled himself with considering 
which king was intended, nor to which side of the water their 
good wishes were directed. Under George or Charles he 
would have been the same quiet subject, never busying him 
self with a thought about political matters, and having no 
other wish concerning them than that they might remain as 
they were ; so far he was a Hanoverian, and no farther. 
There was something of the same temper in his religion ; he 
was a sincere Christian; and had he been born to attendance 
at the mass or the meetinghouse, would have been equally 
sincere in his attachment to either of those extremes , for his 
whole mind was in his profession. He was learned in its 

* Ben Jonson. 



138 THE DOCTOR. 

history, fond of its theories, and skilful in its practice, in 
which he trusted little to theory and much to experience. 

Both he and his wife were at this time well stricken in 
years ; they had no children, and no near kindred on either 
side, and being both kindhearted people, the liking which 
they soon entertained towards Daniel for his docility, his 
simpHcity of heart, his obliging temper, his original cast of 
mind, and his never-failing good humour, ripened into a set- 
tled affection. 

Hopkins lived next door to the Mansionhouse, which edifice 
was begmi a few years after Daniel went to live with him. 
There is a view of the Mansionhouse in Dr. Miller's History 
of Doncaster, and in that print the dwelling in question is 
included. It had undergone no other alteration at the time 
this view was taken than that of having had its casements 
replaced by sash windows, an improvement which had been 
made by our doctor, when the framework of the casements 
had become incapable of repair. The gilt pestle and mortar 
also had been removed from their place before the door. In- 
ternally the change had been greater ; for the same business 
not being continued there after the doctor's decease, the shop 
had been converted into a sittingroom, and the very odour of 
medicine had passed away. But 1 will not allow myself to 
dwell upon this melancholy subject. The world is full of 
mutations, and there is hardly any that does not bring with it 
some regret at the time — and alas ! more in the retrospect ! 
I have lived to see the American colonies separated from 
Great Britain, the kingdom of Poland extinguished, the repub- 
lic of Venice destroyed, its territory seized by one usurper, 
delivered over in exchange to another, and the transfer sanc- 
tioned and C(jnfirmed by all the powers of Europe in con- 
gress assembled ! I have seen Heaven knows how many 
little principalities and states, proud of their independence, 
and happy in the privileges connected with it, swallowed up 
by the Austrian or the Prussian eagle, or thrown to the Bel- 
gic lion, as his share in the division of the spoils. I have 
seen constitutions spring up like mushrooms, and kicked 
down as easily. 1 have seen the rise and fall of Napoleon. 

I have seen cedars fall, 
And in their room a mushroom grow ; 
I have seen comets, threatening all, 
Vanish themselves ;* 

wherefore then should I lament over what time and mutability 
have done to a private dwellinghouse in Doncaster 1 

It was an old house, which when it was built had been one 
of the best in Doncaster ; and even after the great improve- 
ments, which have changed the appearance of the town, had 

* Habington. 



THE DOCTOR. 139 

an air of antiquated respectability about it. Had it been near 
the church it would have been taken for the vicarage; 
standing where it did, its physiognomy was such that you 
might have guessed it was the doctor's house, even if the 
pestle and mortar had not been there as his insignia. There 
were eight windows and two doors in the front. It con- 
sisted of two stories, and was oddly built; the middle part 
having, something in the Scotch manner, the form of a gable 
end towards the street. Behind this was a single chinmey, 
tall, and shaped like a pillar. In windy nights the doctor 
was so often consulted by Mrs. Dove concerning the stability 
of that chimney, that he accounted it the plague of his life. 
But it was one of those evils which could not be removed 
without bringing on a worse, the alternative being whether 
there should be a tall chinmey or a smoky house. And after 
the Majisionhouse was erected, there was one wind which 
in spite of the chimney's elevation drove the smoke down- 
so inconvenient is it sometimes to be fixed near a great 
neighbour. 

This unfortunate chimney, being in the middle of the house, 
served for four apartments ; the doctor's study and his bed- 
chamber on the upper floor, the kitchen and the best parlour 
on the lower; that parlour, yes, reader, that very parlour 
wherein, as thou canst not have forgotten, Mrs. Dove was 
making tea for the doctor on that ever memorable afternoon 
with which our history begins. 



CHAPTER XXIX. P. 1. 

a hint of reminiscence to the reader the clock of st. 

George's — a word in honour of archdeacon markham. 

There is a ripe season for everything, and if you slip that or anticipate 
it, you dim the grace of the matter, be it never so good. As we say by 
way of proverb that a hasty birth brings forth blind whelps, so a good 
tale tumbled out before the time is ripe for it, is ungrateful to the hearer.— 
Bishop Hackett. 

The judicious reader will now have perceived that in the 
progress of this narrative, which may be truly said to 

" bear 
A music in the ordered history 
It lays before us," 

we have arrived at that point which determines the scene» 
and acquaints him with the local habitation of the doc- 

7 



140 THE DOCTOR. 

tor. He will perceive also that in our method of narration 
nothing has been inarlificially anlicipatfcd ; that there have 
been no premature disclo«ures, no precipitation, no hurry or 
impatience on my part ; and that on the other hand there has 
been no unnecessary delay, but that we have regularly and 
naturally come to this development. The author who un- 
dertakes a task like mine 

" mwst nombre al the hole cyrcumstaunce 
Of hys matter with brevyacion," 

as an old poet says of the professors of the rhyming art, and 
must moreover be careful 

" That he walke not by longe continuance 
The perambulate way," 

as I have been, oh reader ! and as it is my fixed intention 
still to be. Thou knowest, gentle reader, that I have never 
■wearied thee with idle and worthless words ; thou knowest 
that the old comic writer spake truly when he said, that the 
man who speaks little says too much, if he says what is not 
to the point ; but that he who speaks well and wisely will 
never be accused of speaking at too great length. 



Tov fifj \kyovTa twv SoivToyv ixr]6( ?v 
avWafid 
dvai fxaKpdv 



Tdv 6' £0 XeyovTa, lifj vSuil,' dvai fxaKpdv, 
M»?(5' uv u(p66p' eirfr] rroXXa, fai -noXiiv xP^°^* 



My good readers will remember that, as was duly noticed 
in our first chapter P. I., the clock of St. George's had just 
struck five, when Mrs. Dove was pouring out the seventh 
cup of tea for her husband, and when our history opens. I 
have some observations to make concerning both the tea 
and the tea service, which will clear the doctor from any 
imputation of intemperance in his use of that most pleasant, 
salutiferous, and domesticizing beverage, but it would disturb 
the method of my narration were they to be introduced in 
this place. Here I have something to relate about the clock. 
Some forty or fifty years ago, a butcher being one of the 
churchwardens of the year, and fancying himself in that 
capacity invested with full power to alter and improve any- 
thing in or about the church, thought proper to change the 
position of the'clock, and accordingly had it removed to the 
highest part of the tower, immediately under the battlements. 
Much beautiful Gothic work was cut away to make room for 
the three dials, which he placed on three sides of this fine 
tower ; and when he was asked what had induced him thus 
doubly to disfigure the edifice by misplacing the dials, and 
destroying so much of the ornamental part, the great and 

* Philemon. 



THE DOCTOR. 141 

greasy kiilcovv answered, that by fixing the dials so high, he 
could now stand at his own shop door and see what it was 
o'clock ! That convenience this arrant churchwarden had the 
satisfaction of enjoying for several years, there being no au- 
thority that could call him to account for the insolent mischief 
he had done. But Archdeacon Markham (to his praise be it 
spoken) at the end of the last century prevailed on the then 
churchwardens to remove two of the dials, and restore the 
architectural ornaments which had been defaced. 

This was the clock which, with few intervals, measured 
out by hours the life of Daniel Dove from the seventeenth 
year of his age, when he first set up his rest within its sound. 

Perhaps of all the works of man sun dials and church 
clocks are those which have conveyed most feeling to the 
human heart ; the clock more than the sun dial, because it 
speaks to the ear as well as to the eye, and by night as well 
as by day. Our forefathers understood this, and therefore 
they not only gave a tongue to time, but provided that he 
should speak often to us, and remind us that the hours are 
passing. Their quarter-boys and their chimes were designed 
for this moral purpose, as much as the memento which is so 
commonly seen upon an old clock face — and so seldom upon a 
new one. I never hear chimes that they do not remind me 
of those which were formerly the first sounds I heard in the 
morning, which used to quicken my step on my way to 
school, and which announced my release from it, when the 
same tune methought had always a merrier import. When 
I remember their tones, life seems to me like a dream, and a 
train of recollections arises, which if it were allowed to have 
its course would end in tears. 



CHAPTER XXX. P. I. 

THE OLD BELLS RUNG TO A NEW TUNE. 

If the bell have amy sides the clapper will find 'em. 

Ben Jonson. 

That same St. George's Church has a peal of eight tuna- 
ble bells, in the key of E. b. ; the first bell weighing seven 
hundred, one quarter, and fourteen pounds. 

Tra tutte quante le musiche humane, 
O signor mio gentil, tra le piQ care 
Gioje del mondo, h '1 suon delle campane ■ 
Don don don don don don, che ve ne pare ?* 

* Agnolo Firenzuola. 



142 THE DOCTOR. 

They were not christened, because they were not Roman 
Catholic bells ; for in Roman Catholic countries church bells 
are christened with the intention of causing them to be held 
in greater reverence — 

pero ordino n'un consistoro 

Un certo di quel buon papi ail' antica, 
Che non ci lavoravan di strafuro, 

Che la campana si, si benedica, 
Poi SI battezzi, e se le ponga il nome, 
Prima che' in cainpanii 1' utizio dica. 

Gil organi, ch' anco lor san si ben come 
Si dica il vespro, e le messe cantate, 
Mon Lianno questo honor sopra le chiome. 

Che le lorcaniie non son batiezzate, 
Ne' nome ha i' una Pier, 1' alira Maria 

Come hanno le campane preiibale.*" 

The bells of St. George's, Doncaster, I say, were not 
christened, because they were Protestant bells; for distinc- 
tion's sake, however, we will name them as the belis stand 
in the dirge of that unfortunate cat whom Johnny Green 
throw into the well. 

But it will be better to exhibit their relative weights in 
figures, so that they may be seen synoptically. Thus then : 



Bim the first 
Bim the second . 
Bim the third 
Bim the fourth . 
Bim the fifth 
Bim the sixth 

Bom 

BeU 

I cannot but admit that these appellations are not so stately 
in appearance as those of the peal which the Bishop of 
Chalons recently baptized, and called a " happy and holy 
family" in the edifying discourse that he delivered upon the 
occasion. The first of tiiese was called Marie, to which — or 
to whom — the Duke and Duchess of DanderviUe (so the 
newspapers give this name) stood sponsors. " It is you, 
Mane," said the bisliop, " who will have the honour to an- 
nounce the festivals, and proclaim the glory of the Lord ! 
You appear among us imder the most happy auspices, pre- 
sented by those respectable and illustrious hands to which 
the practices of piety have been so long familiar. And you, 
Anne," he pursued, addressing the second bell — " an ouject 
worthy of the zeal and piety of our first magistrate, (the pre- 

* Agnolo Firenzuola. 



Cwt. 


qr. 


lb. 


7 


1 


14 


8 





18 


8 


2 


6 


10 


3 


15 


13 


1 





15 


2 


16 


22 


1 





29 


1 


20 



THE DOCTOR. 143 

feet,) and of her who so nobly shares his solicitude — yon 
shall be charged with the same employment. Your voice 
shall be joined to Marie's upon important occasions. Ah ! 
what touchfng lessons will you not give in imitation of her 
whose name you bear, and whom we reverence as the purest 
of virgins ! You also, Deodate, will take part in this con- 
cert, you whom an angel, a newborn infant, has conjointly 
with me consecrated to the Lord ! Speak, Deodate ! and let 
us hear your marvellous accents." This angel and god 
mother in whose name the third bell was given was Made- 
moiselle Deodate Boisset, then in the second month of her 
age, daughter of Viscount Boisset. "And you, Stephanie, 
crowned with glory," continued the orator, in learned allu- 
sion to the Greek word <rs<pavos, " you are not less worthy to 
mingle your accents with the melody of your sisters. And 
you lastly, Seraphine and Pudentienne, you will raise your 
voices in this touching concert, happy all of you in having 
been presented to the benedictions of the church, by these 
noble and generous souls, so praiseworthy for the liveliness 
of their faith, and the holiness of their example." And then 
the bishop concluded by calling upon the congregation to 
join with him in prayer, that the Almighty would be pleased 
to preserve from all accidents this *• happy and holy family 
of the bells." 

We have no such sermons from our bishops ! The whole 
ceremony must have been as useful to the bells as it was 
edifying to the people. 

Were 1 called upon to act as sponsor upon such an occa- 
sion, I would name my bell Peter Bell, in honour of Mr. Words- 
worth. There has been a bull so called, and a bull it was 
of great merit. But if it were the great bell, then it should 
be called Andrew, in honour of Dr. Bell ; and that bell should 
call the children to school. 

There are, 1 believe, only two bells in England which are 
known by their Christian names, and they are both called 
Tom ; but Great Tom of Oxford, which happens to be much 
the smaller of the two, was christened in the feminine gender, 
being called Mary, in the spirit of catholic and courtly adu- 
lation at the commencement of the bloody queen's reign. 
Tresham the vice chancellor performed the ceremony, and 
his exclamation when it first summoned him to mass has 
been recorded: "Oh delicate and sweet harmony! Oh 
beautiful Mary ! how musically she sounds ! how strangely 
she pleaseth my ear !" 

In spite of this christening, the object of Dr. Tresham's 
admiration is as decidedly a Tom Bell, as the puss in boots 
that appeared at a masquerade (Theodore Hook remembers 
when and where) was a torn cat. Often as the said Tom 
Bell has been mentioned, there is but one other anecdote re- 
corded of him ; it occurred on Thursday, the thirteenth day 



144 THE DOCTOR. 

of March, 1806, and was thus described in a letter written 
two hours after the event : " An odd thing happened to-day 
about half-past four, Tom suddenly went mad; he began 
striking as fast as he could about twenty times. Everybody 
went out doubting whether there was an earthquake, or 
whether the dean was dead, or the college on fire. How- 
ever, nothing w^a« the matter but that Tom was taken ill in 
his bowels : in other words something had happened to the 
works, but it was not of any serious consequence, for he has 
struck six as well as ever, and bids fair to toll 101 to-night 
as well as he did before the attack." 

This was written by a youth of great natural endow- 
ments, rare acquirements, playful temper, and affectionate 
heart. If his days had been prolonged, his happy industry, 
his inoffensive wit, his sound judgment, and his moral 
worth, favoured as they were by all favourable circum- 
stances, must have raised him to distinction, and the name 
of Barre Roberts, which is now known only in the little circle 
of his own and his father's friends, would have had its place 
with those who have deserved well of their kind and re- 
flected honour upon their country. 

But I return to a subject, which would have interested 
him in his antiquarian pursuits — for he loved to wander 
among the ruins of time. We will return, therefore, to that 
ceremony of christening church bells, which, with other 
practices of the holy Roman Catholic and apostolic church, 
has been revived in France. 

Bells, say those theologians in issi??n who have gravely 
written upon this grave matter — bells, say they, are not ac- 
tually baptized with that baptism which is administered for 
the remission of sins ; but they are said to be christened be- 
cause the same ceremonies which are observed in christen- 
ing children are also observed in consecrating them, such as 
the washing, the anointing, and the imposing of a name ; all 
which, however, may more strictly be said to represent the 
signs and symbols of baptism, than they may be called bap- 
tism itself. 

Nothing can be more candid ! Bells are not baptized for 
the remission of sins, because the original sin of a bell 
would be a flaw in the metal, or a defect in the tone, neither 
of which the priest undertakes to remove. There was, how- 
ever, a previous ceremony of blessing the furnace when the 
bells were cast within the precincts of a monastery, as they 
most frequently were in former times, and this may have 
been intended for the prevention of such defects. The 
brethren stood round the furnace ranged in processional 
order, sang the 150th Psalm, and then after certain prayers 
blessed the molten metal, and called upon the Lord to infuse 
into it his grace and overshadow it with his power, for the 



THE DOCTOR. 145 

honour of the saint, to whom the bell was to be dedicated 
and whose name it was to bear. 

When the time of christening came, the officiating priest 
and his assistant named every bell five times, as a sort of 
prelude, for some unexplained reason which may perhaps be 
as significant and mystical as the other parts of the cere- 
mony. He then blessed the water in two vessels which 
were prepared for the service. Dipping a clean linen cloth 
in one of these vessels he washed the bell within and with- 
out, the bell being suspended over a vessel wider in circum- 
ference than the bell's mouth, in order that no drop of the 
water employed in this washing might fall to the ground ; 
for the water was holy. Certain psalms were said or sung 
(they were the 96th and the four last in the psalter) during 
this part of the ceremony and while the officiating priest pre- 
pared the water in the second vessel : this he did by sprink- 
ling salt in it, and putting holy oil upon it, either with his 
thumb or with a stick ; if the thumb were used, it was to 
be cleaned immediately by rubbing it well with salt over the 
same water. Then he dipped another clean cloth in this 
oiled and salted water, and again washed the bell, within and 
without : after the service the cloths were burned lest they 
should be profaned by other uses. The bell was then au- 
thentically named. Then it. was anointed with chrism 
in the form of a cross four times on the broadest part 
of the outside, thrice on the smaller part, and four times 
on the inside, those parts being anointed with most care 
against which the clapper was to strike. After this the 
name was again given. Myrrh and frankincense were then 
brought, the bell was incensed while part of a psalm was 
recited, and the bell was authentically named a third time ; 
after which the priest carefully wiped the chrism from the 
bell with tow, and the tow was immediately burned in the 
censer. Next the priest struck each bell thrice with its 
clapper, and named it again at every stroke ; every one of 
the assistants in like manner struck it and named it once. 
The bells were then carefully covered each with a cloth, 
and immediately hoisted that they might not be contami- 
nated by an irreverent touch. The priest concluded by ex- 
plaining to the congregation, if he thought proper, the reason 
for this ceremony of christening the bells: which was that they 
might act as preservatives against thunder and lightning, and 
hail, and wind, and storms of every kind, and moreover that 
they might drive away evil spirits. To these and their other 
virtues the Bishop of Chalons alluded in his late truly Gal- 
ilean and Roman Cathohc discourse. " The bells," said he, 
*' placed like sentinels on the towers, watch over us and turn 
away from us the temptations of the enemy of our salva- 
tion, as well as storms and tempests. They speak and pray 



146 THE DOCTOR. 

for US in our troubles ; they inform Heaven of the necessities 

of the earth." 

Now were this edifying part of the Roman Catholic ritual 
to be reintroduced in the British dominions — as it very 
possibly may be now that Lord Peter has appeared in his 
robes before the king-, and been introduced by his title — the 
Dpportunity would no doubt be taken by the bishop or Jesuit 
who might direct the proceedings, of complimenting the 
friends of their cause by naming the first " holy and happy 
family" after them. And to commemorate the extraordinary 
union of sentiment which that cause has brought about be- 
tween perstms not otherwise remarkable for any similitude 
of feelings or opinions, they might unite two or more names 
in one bell, (as is frequently done in the human su^bject,) and 
thus with a peculiar felicity of compliment, show who and 
who upon this great and memorable occasion have pulled 
together. In such a case the names selected for a peal of 
eight tunable bells might run thus : — 

Bim 1st. . . . Canning O'Connel. 

Bim 2d. ... Plunkett Shiel. 

Bim 3d. ... Augustus Frederick Cobbett. 

Bim 4th. . . . WiiUams Wynn Burdett Waithman 

Bim 5th. . '. . Grenville Wood. 

Bim 6th. . . . Palmerston Hume. 

Bom .... Lawless Brougham. 

Bell .... Lord King, per se ; — 

— alone joar excellence, as the thickest and thinnest friend of 
the cause, and moreover because 

None but himself can be his parallel ; 

and last in order because the base note accords best with 
him ; and because for the decorum and dignity with which 
he has at all times treated the bishops, the clergy, and the 
subject of religion, he must be allowed to bear the bell not 
from his compeers alone but from all his contemporaries. 



THE DOCTOB 147 



CHAPTER XXXI. P. I. 

MORE CONCERNING BELLS. 

Lord, ringing ctianges all our bells hath marr'd ; 

Jangled they have and jarr'd 
So long, they're out of tune, and out of frame ; 

They seem not now the same. 
Put them in frame anew, and once liegin 
To tune them so, that they may chime all in ! 

Herbert. 

There are more mysteries in a peal of bells than were 
touched upon by the Bishop of Chalons in his sermon. 
There are plain bob-triples, bob-majors, bob-majors reversed, 
double bob-majors, and grandsire bob-cators, and there is a 
Bob-maximus. Who Bob was, and whether he were Bob 
Major, or Major Bob, that is whether Major were his name 
or his rank, and if his rank, to what ser%'ice he belonged, are 
questions which inexorable Oblivion will not answer, how- 
ever earnestly adjured. And there is no Witch of Endor 
who will call up Bob from the grave to answer them him- 
self. But there are facts in the history of bellringing which 
Oblivion has not yet made her own, and one of them is that 
the greatest performance ever completed by one person in 
the world, was that of Mr. Samuel Thurston at the New 
Theatre public house in the city of Norwich, on Saturday 
evening, July 1, 1809, when he struck all these intricate 
short peals, the first four upon a set of eight musical hand 
bells, the last on a peal of ten. 

But a performance upon hand bells when compared to 
bellringing is even less than a review in comparison with a 
battle. Strength of arm as well as skill is required for 
managing a bell rope. Samuel Thurston's peal of plain bob- 
triples was " nobly brought round" in two minutes and three 
quarters, and his grandsire bob-cators were as nobly finished 
in five minutes and fourteen seconds. The reader shall now 
see what real bellringing is. 

The year 1796 was remarkable for the performance of 
great exploits in this manly and English art — for to England 
the art is said to be peculiar, the cheerful carillons of the 
Continent being played by keys. In that year, and in the 
month of August, the W^estmoreland youths rang a conjplele 
peal of 5040 grandsire triples, in St. Mary's Church Kendul, 
being the whole number of changes on seven bells. The 
peal was divided into ten parts, or courses of 501 each ; the 
bobs were called by the sixth, a lead single was made in the 



148 THE DOCTOR. 

middle of the peal, and another at the conclusion which 
brought the bells home. Distinct leads and exact divisions 
were observed throughout the whole, and the performance 
was completed in three hours and twenty minutes. A like 
performance took place in the same month at Kidderminster 
in three hours and fourteen minutes. Stephen Hill com- 
posed and called the peal, it was conducted through with one 
single, which was brought to the 4984th change, viz., 1,267,453. 
This was allowed by those who were conversant in the art to 
exceed any peal ever yet rung in this kingdom by that method. 

Paulo majora canamus. The society of Cambridge youths 
that same year rang in the Church of St, Mary the Great, a 
true and complete peal of Bob-maximus, in five hours and 
five minutes. This consisted of 6600 changes, and for regu- 
larity of striking and harmony throughout the peal was al- 
lowed by competent judges to be a very masteily perform- 
ance. In point of time the striking was to such a nicety 
that in each thousand changes the time did not vary one 
sixteenth of a minute, and the compass of the last thousand 
was exactly equal to the first. 

Eight Birmingham youths (some of them were under 
twenty years of age) attempted a greater exploit, they ven- 
tured upon a complete peal of 15,120 bob-major. They failed 
indeed, magnis tamen ausis. For after they had rung upward 
of eight hours and a half, they found themselves so much 
fatigued that they desired the caller would take the first op- 
portunity to bring the bells home. This he soon did by 
omitting a bob, and so brought them round, thus making a peal 
of 14,224 changes in eight hours and forty-five minutes, the 
longest which was ever rung in that part of the country, or 
perhaps anywhere else. 

In that same year died Mr. Patrick, the celebrated com- 
poser of church-bell music, and senior of the Society of Cum- 
berland Youths — an Hibernian sort of distinction for one in 
middle or latter life. He is the same person whose name was 
well known in the scientific world as a maker of barometers ; 
and he it was who composed the whole peal of Stedman's 
triples, 5,040 changes ; (which his obituarist says had till then 
been deemed impracticable, and for the discovery of which 
he received a premium of 50Z. off"ered for that purpose by the 
Norwich amateurs of the art ;) " his productions of real 
double and treble bob-royal being a standing monument of 
his unparalleled and superlative merits." This Mr. Patrick 
was interred on the afternoon of Sunday, June 26, in the 
churchyard of St. Leonard, Shoreditch; the corpse was fol- 
lowed to the grave by all the ringing societies in London and 
its environs, each sounding hand bells with muflfled clappers, 
the church bells at the same time ringing a dead peal — 

" 'flf oEy* ari<p'ui:ov Ta<pov UarpiKOi l3o66oSdnoio." 



THE DOCTOR. 149 

James Ogden was interred with honours of the same kind 
at Ashton under Line, in the year of this present writing, 
1827. His remains were borne to the grave by the ringers 
of St. Michael's Tower in that town, with whom he had rung 
the tenour bell for more than fifty years, and with whom he 
performed " the unprecedented feat" of ringing five thousand 
on that bell (which weighed 28 cwt.) in his sixty-seventh 
year. After the funeral his old companions rang a dead peal 
for him of 828 changes, that being the number of the months 
of his life. Such in England are the funeral honours of the 

BcXtisoi. 

It would take 91 years to ring the changes upon twelve 
bells, at the rate of two strokes to a second ; the changes 
upon fourteen could not be rung through at the same rate in 
less than 16,575 years ; and upon four-and-twenty they would 
require more than 117,000 billions of years. 

Great then are the mysteries of bellringing! And this 
may be said in its praise, that of all devices which men have 
sought out for obtaining distinction by making a noise in the 
world, it is the most harmless. 



CHAPTER XXXn. P. I. 

AN INTRODUCTION TO CERTAIN PRELIMINARIES ESSENTIAL TO THE 
PROGRESS OF THIS WORK. 

Mas demos ya el asiento en lo importante, 
Que el tiempo huye del mundo per la posta. 

Balbuena. 

The subject of these memoirs heard the bells of St. George's 
ring for the battles of Dettingen and Culloden ; for Commo- 
dore Anson's return and Admiral Hawke's victory ; for the 
conquest of Quebec ; for other victories, important in their 
day, though in the retrospect they may seem to have pro- 
duced little eflfect ; and for more than one peace ; for the 
going out of the old style, and for the coming in of the new ; 
for the accession, marriage, and coronation of George the 
Third ; for the birth of George the Fourth ; and that of all his 
royal brethren and sisters : and what was to him a subject of 
nearer and dearer interest than any of these events — for his 
own wedding. 

What said those bells to him on that happy day ? for that 
bells can convey articulate sounds to those who have the gift 
of interpreting their language, Whittington, lord mayor of 
London town, knew by fortunate experience. 



150 THE DOCTOR. 

So did a certain father confessor in the NetherlanJs whom 
a buxom widow consulted upon the perilous question whether 
she should marry a second husband, or continue in widowed 
blessedness. The prudent priest deemed it too delicate a 
point for him to decide ; so he directed her to attend to the 
bells of her church when next they chimed, (they were but 
three in number,) and bring him word what she thought they 
said ; and he exhorted her to pray in the mean time earnestly 
for grace to understand them rightly, and in the sense that 
might be most for her welfare here and hereafter, as he on 
his part would pray for her. She listened with mouth and 
ears, the first time that the bells struck up ; and the more 
she listened, the more plainly they said, " Nempt een man, 
Nempi een man! — Take a spouse, take a spouse!" "Ay, 
daughter!" said the confessor, when she returned to him 
with her report, " if the bells have said so, so say I ; and not 
I alone, but the apostle also, and the spirit who through that 
apostle hath told us when it is best for us to marry !" Reader, 
thou mayst thank the Leonine poet Gummarus Van Craen 
for this good story. 

What said the bells of Doncaster to our dear doctor on that 
happy morning which made him a whole man by uniting to 
him the rib that he till then had wanted 1 They said to him 
as distinctly as they spoke to Whittington, and to the Flemish 
Widow—- 

Daniel Dove brings Deborah home. 
Daniel Dove brings Deborah home 




Daniel Dove brings Deborah home. 

But whither am I hurrying ? It was not till the year 1761 
that that happy union was effected ; and the fourteen years 
whose course of events I have reluctantly, yet of necessity, 
pretermitted, bring us only to 1748, in which year the peace of 
Aix-la-Chapelle was made. Peter Hopkins and Mrs. Hop- 
kins were then both living, and Daniel had not attained to 
the honours of his diploma. Before we come to the day on 
which the bells rung that joyful peal, I must enter into some 
details for the purpose of showing how he became qualified 
for his degree, and how he was enabled to take it ; and it 
will be necessary, therefore, to say something of the oppor- 
tunities of instruction which he enjoyed under Hopkins, and 
of the state of society in Doncaster at that time. And pre ' 



THE DOCTOR. 151 

liminary to, as preparatory for all this, some account is to be 
given of Doncaster itself. 

Reader, you may skip this preliminary account if you 
please, but it will be to your loss if you do ! You, perhaps, 
may be one of those persons who can travel from Dan to 
Beersheba, and neither make inquiry concerning, nor take 
notice of, anything on the way ; but, thank Heaven, I cannot 
pass through Doncaster in any such mood of mind. If, 
however, thou belongest to a better class, then may I promise 
that in what is here to follow, thou wilt find something to 
recompense thee for the little time thou wilt employ in read- 
ing it, were that time more than it will be, or more valuable 
than it is. For I shall assuredly either tell thee of something 
which thou didst not know before, (and let me observe, by- 
the-by, that I never obtained any information of any kind, 
which did not on some occasion or other prove available,) 
or I shall waken up to pleasurable consciousness thy napping 
knowledge. Snuff the candles, therefore, if it be candle- 
light, and they require it ; (I hope, for thine eyes' sake, thou 
art not reading by a lamp !) stir the fire, if it be winter, and 
it be prudent to refresh it with the poker ; and then comfort- 
ably begin a new chapter — 

Faciam ut hujus loci semper memineris.* 



CHAPTER XXXni. P. I. 

DONCASTRIANA THE RIVER DON. 

Rivers from bubbling springs 
Have rise at first ; and great from abject things. 

MiDDLETOX, 

How would it have astonished Peter Hopkins if some one 
gifted with the faculty of second sight had foretold to him 
that, at the sale of pews in a new church at Doncaster, 
eighteen of those pews should produce upward of sixteen 
hundred pounds, and that one of them should be bought at 
the price of 138Z. ; a sum for which in his days lands enough 
might have been purchased to have qualified three men as 
Yorkshire freeholders ! How would it have surprised him to 
have been told that Doncaster races would become the great- 
est meeting in the North of England ; that princes would 
attend them, and more money would annually be won and 
lost there than might in old times have sufllced for a king's 

* Terence. 



152 THE DOCTOR. 

ransom ! But the Doncaster of George the Fourth's reign is 
not more like the Doncaster of George the Second's than 
George the Fourth himself, in manners, habit, character, and 
person, is like his royal great-grandfather ; not more like than 
to the Doncaster of the United States, if such a place there 
be there ; or to the Doncaster that may be in New South 
Wales, Van Diemen's or Swan-river Land. It was a place 
of considerable importance when young Daniel first became 
an inhabitant of it; but it was very far from having attained 
all the advantages arising from its well-endowed corporation, 
its race ground, and its position on the great north road. 

It is beyond a doubt that Doncaster may be identified with 
the Danum of Antoninus and the Notitia, the Caer Daun of 
Nennius, and the Dona-cester of the Saxons r whether it were 
the Campo-donum of Bede, a royal residence of the North- 
umbrian kings, where Paulinus the Romish apostle of North- 
umbria built a church, which with the town itself was burnt 
by the Welsh king Cadwallon and his Saxon ally the pagan 
Penda, after a battle in which Edwin fell, is not so certain ; 
antiquaries differ upon this point, but they who maintain the 
affirmative appear to have the strongest case. In the charter 
granted to it by Richard Cceur de Lion the town is called 
Danecastre. 

The name indicates that it was a Roman station on the 
river Dan, Don, or Dun, " so called," says Camden, " because 
'tis carried in a low deep channel, for that is the signification 
of the British word dan." I thank Dr. Prichard for telling 
me what it was not possible for Camden to know, that don 
in the language of the Ossetes, a Caucassian tribe, means 
water; and that in a country so remote as New Guinea, dan 
has the same meaning. Our doctor loved the river for its 
name's sake ; and the better because the river Dove falls into 
it. Don, however, though not without some sacrifice of 
feeling, he was content to call it, in conformity to the estab- 
lished usage. A more satisfactory reason to him would have 
been that of preserving the identity of name with the Don 
of Aberdeenshire and of the Cossacks, and the relationship 
in etymology with the Donau, but that the original pronun- 
ciation which was, as he deemed, perverted in that latter 
name was found in Danube; and that by calling his own 
river Don it ceased to be homonymous with that Dan which 
adds its waters and its name to the Jor. 

But the Yorkshire Don might be liked also for its own 
sake. Hear how its course is described in old prose and 
older verse ! " The river Don or Dun," says Dodsworth in 
his Yorkshire collections, " riseth in the upper part of Pen- 
nystone parish near Lady's Cross ; (which may be called our 
Apennines, because the rain water that falleth sheddeth 
from sea to sea;) cometh to Birchworth, so to Pennystone, 
(hence to Boleterstone by Medop, leaveth Wharncliffe Chase 



THE DOCTOR. 153 

(stored with roebucks, which are decayed since the great 
frost) on the north, (belonging to Sir Francis Wortley, where 
he hath great iron works — the said WharncHffe affordeth 
two hundred dozen of coal for ever to his said works — in 
this chase he had red and fallow deer and roes,) and leaveth 
Bethuns, a chase and tower of the Earl of Salop, on the 
south side. By Wortley to Waddsley, where in times past 
Everingham of Stainber had a park, now disparked. Thence 
to Sheffield, and washeth the castle wall; keepeth its course 
to Attercliffe, where is an iron forge of the Earl of Salop; 
from thence to Winkebank, Kymberworth,and Eccles, where 
it entertaineth the Rother; cometh presently to Rotherham, 
thence to Aldwark Hall, the Fitzwilliams' ancient possession ; 
then to Thriberg Park, the seat of Reresbyes Knights ; then 
to Mexborough, where hath been a castle; then to Conis- 
borough Park and Castle of the earls of Warrens, where 
there is a place called Horsas Tomb. From thence to 
Sprotebrough, the ancient seat of the famous family of 
Fitzwilliam who have flourished since the conquest. Thence 
by Newton to Donecastre, Wheatley and Kirk Sandal to 
Barnby-Dunn; by Bramwith and Stainforth to Fishlake; 
thence to Turnbrig, a port town serving indifferently for all 
the west parts, where he pays his tribute to the Ayre." 

Hear Michael Drayton next, who being as determined a 
personificator as Darwin himself, makes " the wide West 
Riding" thus address her favourite River Don : 

"Thou first of all my floods, whose banks do bound my south, 
And offerest up thy stream to mighty Humber's mouth ; 
Of yew and climbing elm that crown'd with many a spray. 
From thy clear fountain first through many a mead dost play, 
Till Rother, whence the name of Rotherham first begun, 
At that her christened town doth lose her in my Don ; 
Which proud of her recourse, towards Doncaster doth drive, 
Her great and chiefest town, the name that doth derive. 
From Don's near bordering banks ; when holding on her race, 
She, dancing in and out, indenteth Hatfield Chase, 
"Whose bravery hourly adds new honours to her bank : 
When Sherwood sends her in slow Iddle that, made rank 
With her profuse excess, she largely it bestows 
On Marshland, whose swoln womb with such abundance flows, 
As that her battening breast her fathngs sooner feeds, 
And with more lavish waste than oft the grazier needs ; 
Whose soil, as some reports, that be her borderers, note. 
With water under earth undoubtedly doth float. 
For when the waters rise, it risen doth remain 
High, while the floods are high, and when they fall again. 
It falleth : but at last when as my lively Don 
Along by Marshland side her lusty course hath run. 
The Uttle wandering Trent, won'by the loud report 
Of the magnific state and height of Humber's court. 
Draws on to meet with Don, at her approach to Aire." 

Seldon's rich commentary does not extend to that part of 



154 THE DOCTOR. 

the Polyolbion in which these lines occiar, but a comment 
upon the supposed rising and falhng of the Marshland with 
the waters, is supplied by Camden. " The Don," he says, 
after it has passed Hatfield Chase, " divides itself, one stream 
running towards the river Idel which comes out of Notting- 
hamshire ; the other towards the river Aire ; in both which 
they continue till they meet again, and fall into the estuary of 
Humber. Within the island, or that piece of ground encom- 
passed by the branches of these two rivers, are Dikemarsh 
and Marshland, fenny tracts, or rather river islands, about 
fifteen miles round, which produce a very green rank grass, 
and are as it were set round with little villages. Some of 
the inhabitants imagine the whole island floats upon the 
water ; and that sometimes when the waters are increased 
'tis raised higher ; just like what Pomponius Mela tells us of 
the Isle of Autrum in Gaul." Upon this passage Bishop 
Gibson remarks, " As to what our author observes of the 
ground being heaped up. Dr. Johnston afiSrms he has spoke 
with several old men who told him, that the turf moor between 
Thorne and Gowle was so much higher before the draining, 
especially in winter time, than it is now, that before they 
could see little of the church steeple, whereas now they can 
see the churchyard wall." 

The poet might linger willingly with Ebenezer Elliott amid 

" rock, vale, and wood — 
Haunts of his early days, and still loved well — 
And where the sun, o'er purple moorlands wide, 
Gilds Wharncliflfe's oaks, while Don is dark below; 
And where the blackbird sings on Rother's side, 
And where time spares the age of Conisbro' ;" 

but we nmst proceed with good matter of fact prose. 

The river has been made navigable to Tinsley, within three 
miles of Sheflleld, and by this means Sheffield, Rotherham, 
and Doncaster carry on a constant intercourse with Hull. A 
cut was made for draining that part of Hatfield Chase called 
the Levels, by an adventurous Hollander, Cornelius Vermuy- 
den by name, in the beginning of Charles the First's reign. 
Some two hundred families of French and Walloon refugees 
were induced to colonize there at that time. They were 
forcibly interrupted in their peaceful and useful undertaking 
by the ignorant people of the country, who were instigated 
and even led on by certain of the neighbouring gentry, as 
ignorant as themselves ; but the government was then strong 
enough to protect them ; they brought about twenty-four 
thousand acres into cultivation, and many of their descend- 
ants are still settled upon the ground which was thus re- 
claimed. Into this new cut, which is at this day called the 
Dutch river, the Don was turned, its former course having 
been through Eastoft ; but the navigation which has since 



THE DOCTOR. 155 

proved so beneficial to the country, and tcwards which this 
was the first great measure, produced at fiist a plentiful crop 
of lawsuits, and one of the many pamphlets which this htiga- 
tion called forth, bears as an alias in its title, " The Devil 
upon Don." 

Many vestiges of former cultivation were discovered when 
this cut was made — such (according to Gibson's information) 
as gates, ladders, hammers, and shoes. The land was ob- 
served in some places to lie in ridges and furrows, as if it 
had been ploughed ; and oaks and fir trees were frequently 
dug up, some of which were found lying along, with their 
roots still fastened ; others as if cut, or burnt, and severed 
from the ground. Roots were long to be seen in the great 
cut, some very large and standing upright, others with an in- 
clination towards the east. 

About the year 1665, the body of a man was found in a 
turf pit, some four yards deep, lying with his head towards 
the north. The hair and nails were not decayed, and the 
skin was like tanned leather ; but it had lain so long there 
that the bones had become spongy. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. P. I. 



MORAL INTEREST OF TOPOGRAPHICAL WORKS LOCAL ATTACH- 
MENT. 

Let none our author rudely blame 

Who from the story has thus long digress'd ; 

But for his righteous pains may his fair fame 
For ever travel, while his ashes rest. 

Sir William Davenant. 

Reader, if thou carest little or nothing for the Yorkshire 
river Don, and for the town of Doncaster, and for the circum- 
stances connected with it, I am sorry for thee. My venera- 
ble friend the doctor was of a different disposition. He was 
one who loved, like Southey — 

" uncontrolled, as in a dream 
To muse upon the course of human things ; 
Exploring sometimes the remotest springs, 
Far as tradition lends one guiding gleam ; 
Or following upon thought's audacious wings 
Into futurity the endless stream." 



He could not only find 



156 THE DOCTOR. 

tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything,* 

but endeavoured to find all he could in them, and foi that 
reason delighted to inquire into the history of places and of 
things, and to understand their past as well as their present 
state. The revolutions of a mansionhouse within his cir- 
cuit were as inttresting to him as those of the Mogul empire ; 
and he had as much satisfaction in being acquainted with the 
windings of a brook from its springs to the place where it 
fell into the Don, as he could have felt in knowing that the 
sources of the Nile had been explored, or the course and ter- 
mination of the Niger. 

Hear, reader, what a journalist says upon rivers, in the 
newest and most approved style of critical and periodical 
eloquence ! He says, and he regarded himself no doubt with 
no small complacency while so saymg — 

" An acquaintance with" rivers " well deserves to be 
erected into a distinct science. We hail potamology with 
a cordial greeting, and welcome it to our studies, parlours, 
schools, readingrooms, lecturerooms, mechanics' institutes, 
and universities. There is no end to the interest which 
rivers excite. They may be considered physically, geograph- 
ically, historically, politically, commercially, mathematic- 
ally, poetically, pictorially, morally, and even religiously. 
In the world's anatomy they are its veins, as the primitive 
mountains, those mighty structures of granite, are its bones ; 
they minister to the fertility of the earth, the purity of the 
air, and the health of mankind. They mark out nature's 
kingdoms and provinces, and are the physical dividers and 
subdividers of continents. They welcome the bold discov- 
erer into the heart of the country, to whose coast the sea 
has borne his adventurous bark. The richest freights have 
floated on their bosoms, and the bloodiest battles have been 
fought upon their banks. They move the wheels of cotton 
mills by their mechanical power, and madden the souls of 
poets and painters by their picturesque splendour. They 
make scenery and are scenery-, and land yields no landscape 
without water. They are the best vehicle for the transit of 
the goods of the merchant, and for the illustration of the 
maxims of the moralist. The figure is so familiar, that we 
scarcely detect a metaphor when the stream of hfe and the 
course of time flow on into the ocean of eternity." 

Hear, hear, oh hear! 

Udite- 

Fiumi correnti, e rive — 

E voi— fontane vive !t 

* Shakspeare. t Giusto de' Conte. 



THE DOCTOR. 157 

Yet the person who wrote this was neither deficient in feel- 
ing nor ill power; it is the epidemic vice prevailing in an age 
of journals that has infected him. They who frame their 
style ad caplandum fdW into this vein, and as immediate effect 
is their object they are wise in their generation. The public 
to which they address themselves are attracted by it, as flies 
swarm about treacle. 

We are advanced from the age of reason to the age of in- 
tellect, and this is the current eloquence of that age ! let us 
get into an atmosphere of common sense. 

Topographical pursuits, my doctor used to say, tend to 
preserve and promote the civilization of which they are a 
consequence and a proof. They have always prospered in 
prosperous countries, and flourished most in flourishing 
times when there have been persons enough of opulence to 
encourage such studies, and of leisure to engage in them. 
Italy and the Low Countries therefore took the lead in this 
branch of literature ; the Spaniards and Portuguese culti- 
vated it in their better days ; and beginning among ourselves 
with Henry VIII., it has been continued with increasing zeal 
down to the present time. 

- Whatever strengthens our local attachments is favourable 
both to individual and national character. Our home^ — our 
birthplace — our native land — think for a while what the vir- 
tues are which arise out of the feelings connected with these 
words ; and if thou hast any intellectual eyes, thou wilt 
then perceive the connection between topography and 
patriotism. 

Show me a man vt^ho cares no more for one place than 
another, and I will show you in that same person one who 
loves nothing but himself. Beware of those who are home- 
less by choice ! You have no hold on a human being whose 
affections are without a taproot. The laws recognise this 
truth in the privileges which they confer upon freeholders ; 
and public opinion acknowledges it also, in the confidence 
which it reposes upon those who have what is called a stake 
in the countr3^ Vagabond and rogue are convertible terms ; 
and with how much propriety any one may understand who 
knows what are the habits of the wandering classes, such as 
gipsies, tinkers, and potters. 

The feeling of local attachment was possessed by Daniel 
Dove in the highest degree. Spurzheim and the crazyolo- 
gists would have found out a bump on his head for its local 
habitation ; letting that quackery pass, it is enough for me 
to know that he derived this feeling from his birth as a 
mountaineer, and that he had also a right to it by inheritance, 
as one whose ancestors had from time immemorial dwelt 
upon the same estate. Smile not contemptuously at that 
■word, ye, whose domains extend over more square miles 



158 THE DOCTOR. 

than there were square roods upon his patrimony ! To have 
held that little patrimony unimpaired, as well as unenlarged, 
through so many generations, implies more contentment, 
more happiness, and a more uniform course of steadiness 
and good conduct, than could be found in the proudest of 
your genealogies ! 

The most sacred spot upon earth to him was his father's 
hearthstead. Rhine, Rhone, Danube, Thames, or Tiber, the 
mighty Ganges or the mightier Maranon, even Jordan itself, 
affected his imagination less than the Greta, or Wease as he 
was wont to call it, of his native fields ; whose sounds in his 
boyhood were the first which he heard at morning and the 
last at night, and during so many peaceful and happy years, 
made as it were an accompaniment to his solitary musings, 
as he walked between his father's house and his schoolmas- 
ter's, to and fro. 

Next to that wild river Wease, whose visible course was as 
dehghtful to the eye and ear as its subterranean one was to the 
imagination, he loved the Don. He was not one of those re- 
fined persons who like to lessen their admiration of one ob- 
ject by comparing it with another. It entered as little into 
his mind to depreciate the Don because it was not a moun- 
tain stream, as it did into Gorporal Trim's or Uncle Toby's to 
think the worse of Bohemia because it has no seacoast. 
What if it had no falls, no rapids or resting-places, no basins 
whose pellucid water might tempt Diana and the Oreades to 
bathe in it ; instead of these the Don had beauties of its own, 
and utilities which give to such beauties, when combined with 
them, an additional charm. There was not a more pleasing 
object in the landscape to his eyes than the broad sail of a 
barge slowly moving between the trees, and bearing into the 
interior of England the produce of the Baltic, and of the East 
and West. 

The place in the world which he loved best was Ingleton, 
because in that little peaceful village, as in his childhood it 
was, he had once known everybody and everybody had known 
him ; and all his recollections of it were pleasurable, till time 
cast over them a softening but pensive hue. But next to In- 
gleton he loved Doncaster. 

And wherefore did he thus like Doncaster? For a better 
reason than the epigrammatist could give for not liking Dr. 
Fell, though perhaps many persons have no better than that 
epigrammatist had in this case, for most of their likings and 
dislikings. He liked it because he must have been a very un- 
reasonable man if he had not been thankful that his lot had 
fallen there — because he was useful and respected there, con- 
tented, prosperous, happy ; finally, because it is a very lika- 
ble place, being one of the most comfortable towns in Eng- 
land : for it is clean, spacious, in a salubrious situation, well 



THE DOCTOR. 159 

built, well governed, has no manufactories, few poor, a 
greater proportion of inhabitants who are not engaged in 
any trade or calling, than perhaps any other town in the 
kingdom, and moreover it sends no members to parliament. 



INTERCHAPTER III. 

THE AUTHOR QUESTIONS THE PROPRIETY OF PERSONIFYING CIR- 
CUMSTANCE DENIES THE UNITY AND INDIVIStBIl-lTY OF THE 

PUBLIC, AND MAY EVEN BE SUSPECTED OF DOUBTING ITS OM- 
NISCIENCE AND ITS INFALLIBILITY. 

Ha forse 
Testa la plebe, ove si chiuda in vece 
Di senno. altro che nebbia ? o forma voce 
Chi sta piu saggia, che un bebii d'armento? 

Chiabrera. 

" What a kind of being is circumstance !" says Horace Wal 
pole in his atrocious tragedy of the Mysterious Mother. A 
very odd kind of being indeed. In the course of my reading 1 
remember but three beings equally remarkable — as personi- 
fied in prose and verse. Social Tie was one ; Catastrophe 
was another; and Inoculation, heavenly maid ! the third. 

But of all ideal beings the most extraordinary is that 
which we call the public. The public and transubstantia- 
tion I hold to be the two greatest mysteries in or out of na- 
ture. And there are certain points of resemblance between 
them. For as the priest creates the one mystery, so the au- 
thor, or other appellant to the said public, creates the other, 
and both bow down in worship, real or simulated, before the 
idol of their own creation. And as every fragment of the 
wafer, break it into as many as you njay, contains in itself 
the whole entire mystery of transubstantiation, just in the 
same manner every fractional part of the public assumes to 
itself the powers, privileges, and prerogatives of the whole, 
as virtually, potentially, and indefeasably its own. Nay, 
every individual who deems himself a constituent member of 
the said public arrogates them also, and when he professes 
to be actingjo?'o bono publico, the words mean with him all the 
good he can possibly get for himself. 

The old and famous illustration of Hermes may be in part 
applied to the pubhc; it is a circle of which the centre is 
everywhere: in part, I say, for its circumference is defined. 
It is bounded by langruage, and has many intercircles. It is 
indeed a confused multiplicity of circles intersecting each 
other, perpetually in motion and in change. Every man is 



160 THE DOCTOR. 

the centre of some circle, and yet involved in others ; he 
who is not sometimes made giddy by their movements, has a 
strong head ; and he who is not sometimes tlirown off his 
balance by them, stands well upon his legs. 

Again, the public is like a nest of patent coffins packed for 
exportation, one within another. There are publics of alJ 
sizes, from the genus general issimtim, the great general uni- 
versal public, whom London is not large enough to hold, to 
the species specialissima, the little thinking public, which may 
find room in a nutsiieli. 

There is the fashionable public, and the religious public, 
and the play-going public, and the sporting public, and the 
commercial public, and the literary public, and the reading 
pubUc, and Heaven knows how many publics more. They 
call themselves worlds sometimes — as if a certain number of 
worldlings made a world ! 

He who pays his homage to any or all of these publics, is 
a publican and a sinner. 

Nunquam valui populo placere ; nam quoe ego scio non probat pop- 
ulus ; quai probat populus, ego nescio.* 

Bene et ille, quisquis fuit, (ainbigitur enim de auctore,) cum quaerere- 
tar ab illo, quo tanta diligentia artis spectaret ad paucissimos perventurae ? 
Satis sunt, mquic, mihi pauci; satis est unus; satis est nuiius.t 



CHAPTER XXXV. P. I. 

DONCASTRIANA POTTERIC CARR SOMETHING CONCERNING THE 

MEANS OF EMPLOYING THE POOR, AND BETTERING THEIR CON- 
DITION. 

Why should I sowen draf out of my fist, 
When I may sowen wheat, if that me hst? 

Chaucer. 

DoNCASTER is built upon a peninsula, or ridge of land, 
about a mile across, having a gentle slope from east to west, 
and bounded on the west by the river; this ridge is com- 
posed of three strata; to wit, of the alluvial soil deposited 
by the river in former ages, and of limestone on the north 
and west ; and of sandstone to the south and east. To the 
south of this neck of land lies a tract called Potteric Carr, 
which is much below the level of the river, and was a mo- 
rass, or range of fens, when our doctor first took up his abode 
in Doncaster. This tract extends about four miles in 

* Seneca, 2, 79. f lb. ib. 17. 



THE DOCTOR. 161 

length, and nearly three in breadth, and the security which 
it afforded against an attacii on that side, while the river 
protected the peninsula by its semicircular bend on the 
other, was evidently one reason why the Romans fixed upon 
the site of Doncaster for a station. In Brockett's Glossary 
of North-Country Words, carr is interpreted to mean " flat 
marshy land; a pool or lake;" but the etymology of the 
word is yet to be discovered. 

These fens were drained and enclosed pursuant to an act 
of parliament which was obtained for that purpose in the 
year 1766. Three principal drains were then cut, fourteen 
feet wide, and about four miles long, into which the water 
was conducted from every part of the carr, southward, to 
the little river Torne at Rossington Bridge, whence it flows 
into the Trent. Before these drainings the ground was 
liable to frequent itmndations; and about the centre there 
was a decoy for wild ducks : there is still a deep water there, 
of considerable extent, in which very large pike and eels are 
found. The soil, which was so boggy at first that horses 
were lost when attempting to drink at the drains, has been 
brought into good cultivation, (as all such ground may be,) to 
the great improvement of the district; for till this improve- 
ment was effected intermittent fevers and sore throats were 
prevalent there, and they have ceased from the time that 
the land was drained. The most unhealthy season now is 
the spring, when cold winds from the north and northeast 
usually prevail during some six weeks ; at other times Don- 
caster is considered to be a healthy place. It has been ob- 
served that when endemic diseases arrive there, they uni- 
formly come from the south ; and that the state of the 
weather may be foretold from a knowledge of what it has 
been at a given time in London, making an allowance of 
about three days, for the chance of winds. Here, as in all 
places which lie upon a great and frequented road, the trans- 
mission of diseases has been greatly facilitated by the in- 
crease of travelling. 

But before we leave Potteric Carr, let us try, reader 
whether we cannot improve it in another way, that is in the 
dissenting and, so called, evangelical sense of the word, in 
which sense the little of Trafalgar was improved, in a ser- 
mon by the Reverend John Evans. Gentle reader, let you 
and I in like manner endeavour to improve this enclosure of 
the carr. 

Four thousand acres of bog whereof that carr consisted, 
and upon which common sand, coal ashes, and the scra- 
pings of a limestone road were found the best manure, pro- 
duce now good crops of grain and excellent pasturage. 

There are said to be in FJngland and Wales at this time 
3,984,000 acres of uncultivated but cultivable ground; 5,950, 
000 in Scotland ; 4,900,000 in Ireland ; 166,000in the smaller 



162 THE DOCTOR. 

British islands. Crags, woods, and barren land are not in- 
cluded in this statement. Here are 15,000,000 acres, the 
worst of which is as good as the morass which has been re- 
claimed near Doncaster, and the far greater part very ma- 
terially better. 

I address myself now to any one of my readers who pays 
poor rates ; but more especially to him who has any part in 
the disposal of those rates ; and most especially to a clergy- 
man, a magistrate, and a member of parliament. 

The money which is annually raised for poor rates in Eng- 
land and Wales has for some years amounted to from five 
to six millions. With all this expenditure, cases are con- 
tinually occurring of death by starvation, either of hunger, 
or cold, or both together; wretches are carried before the 
magistrates for the offence of lying in the streets or in unfin- 
ished houses, when tiiey have not where to hide their heads; 
others have been found dead by the side of limekilns or 
brick kiljis, whither they had crept to save themselves from 
perishing with cold; and untold numbers die of the diseases 
produced by scanty and unwholesome food. 

This money, moreover, is for the most part so applied, that 
they who have a rightful claim upon it, receive less than in 
justice, in humanity, and according to the intent of a law 
wisely and humanely enacted, ought to be their portion; 
tvhile they who have only a legal claim upon it, that claim 
arising from an evil usage which has become prescriptive, 
receive pay where justice, pohcy, and considerate humanity, 
and these very laws themselves, if rightly administered, 
would award restranit or punishment. 

Thus it is in those pans of the United Kingdom" where a 
provision fur the poor is directly raised by law. In Scotland 
the proportion of paupers is little less, and the evils attend- 
ant upon poverty are felt in an equal or nearly equal degree. 
In Ireland they exist to a far greater extent, and may truly 
be called terrible. 

Is it fitting that this should be while there are fifteen mil- 
lions of cultivable acres lying waste 1 Is it possible to con- 
ceive grosser improvidence in a nation, grosser folly, grosser 
ignorance of its duty and interest, or grosser neglect of both, 
than are manifested in the continuance, fiid growth, and in- 
crease of this enormous evil, when the means of checking it 
are so obvious, and that too by a process in which every 
step must produce direct and tangible good l 

But while the government is doing those things which it 
ought not to have done, and leaves undone those which it 
ought to do, let parishes and corporations do what is in their 
power for themselves. And bestir yourselves in this good 
work, ye who can ! The supineness of the government 
IS no excuse for you. It is in the exertions of individuals 
that all national reformation must begin. Go to work cau- 



THE DOCTOR. 163 

tiously, experimentally, patiently, charitably, and in faith ! 
I am neither so enthusiastic as to suppose, nor so rash as to 
assert, that a cure may thus be found for the complicated 
evils arising from the condition of the labouring classes. 
Out it is one of those remedial means by which much misery 
may be relieved, and much of that profligacy that arises from 
hopeless wretchedness be prevented. It is one of those 
means from which present rehef may be obtained, and future 
good expected. It is the readiest way in which useful em- 
ployment can be provided for the industrious poor. And if 
the land so appropriated should produce nothing more than 
is required for the support of those employed in cultivating 
it, and who must otherwise be partly or wholly supported 
by the poor rates, such cultivation would even then be profit- 
able to the public. Wherever there is heath, moor, or fen — 
which there is in every part of the island — there is work for 
the spade ; employment and subsistence for man is to be 
found there, and room for him to increase and multiply for 
generations. 

Reader, if you doubt that bog and bad land may be profit- 
ably cultivated, go and look at Potteric Carr. (The mem- 
bers of both hou-ses who attend Doncaster races may spare 
an hour for this at the next meeting.) If you desire to 
know in what manner the poor who are now helpless may be 
settled upon such land, so as immediately to earn their own 
maintenance, and in a short time to repay the first cost of 
their establishment, read the account of the pauper colonies 
in Holland ; for there the experiment has been tried, and we 
have the benefit of their experience. 

As for the whole race of political economists, our Mal- 
thusites, Benthamites, Utilitarians or Futilitarians, they are 
to the government of this country such counsellors as the 
magicians were to Pharaoh : whoever listens to them has 
his heart hardened. But they are no conjurers, 
8 



164 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. P. I. 

REMARKS ON AN OPINION OF MR. CRABBe's — TOPOGRAPHICAL 
POETRY DRAYTON. 

Do, pious marble, let thy readers know 

What they and what their children owe 

To Drayton's name, whose sacred dust 

We recommend unto thy trust. 

Protect his memory, and preserve his stoiy; 

Remain a lastmg monument of his glory ; 

And when thy ruins shall disclaim 

To be the treasurer of his name. 

His name that cannot fade, shall be 

An everlasting monument to thee. 

Epitaph, in Westminster Abbey. 

The poet Crabbe has said that there subsists an utter repug- 
nancy between the studies of topography and poetry. He 
must have intended by topography, when he said so, the mere 
definition of boundaries and specification of landmarks, such 
as are given in the advertisement of an estate for sale ; and 
boys in certain parts of the country are taught to bear in 
mind by a remembrance in tail when the bounds of a parish 
are walked by the local authorities. Such topography, in- 
deed, bears as little relation to poetry as a map or chart to a 
picture. 

But if he had any wider meaning, it is evident, by the 
number of topographical poems, good, bad, and indifferent, 
with which our language abounds, that Mr. Crabbe's prede- 
cessors in verscj and his contemporaries also, have differed 
greatly from him in opinion upon this point. The Poly- 
olbion, notwithstanding its commonplace personifications 
and its inartificial transitions, which are as abrupt as those 
in the Metamorphoses and the Fasti, and not so graceful, is 
nevertheless a work as much to be valued by the students 
and lovers of English literature, as by the writers of local 
history. Drayton himself, whose great talents were de- 
servedly esteemed by the ablest of his contemporaries in the 
richest age of English poetry, thought he could not be more 
>vorthily employed than in what he calls the Herculean task 
of this topographical poem ; and in that belief he was encour- 
aged by his friend and commentator Selden, to whose name 
the epithet of learned was in old times always and deservedly 
^j^ed. With how becoming a sense of its dignity and 



THE DOCTOR. 165 

variety the poet entered upon his subject, these lines may 
show : — 

" Thou powerful god of flames, in verse divinely great, 
Touch my invention so with thy true genuine heat, 
That high and noble things 1 slightly may not tell, 
Nor light and idle toys my lines may vainly swell: 
But as my subject serves so high or low to strain, 
And to the varying earth so suit my varying strain. 
That nature in my work thou mayst thy power avow ; 
That as thou first found'st art, and didst her rules allow, 
So I, to thine own self that gladly near would be. 
May herein do the best in imitating thee. 
As thou hast here a hill, a vale there, there a flood, 
A mead here, there a heath, and now and then a wood. 
These thmgs so in my song 1 naturally may show ; 
Now as the mountain high, then as the valley low ; 
Here fruitful as the mead ; there as the heath be bare, 
Then as the gloomy wood I may be rough, though rare." 

I would not say of this poet as Kirkpatrick says of him, that 
when he 

" his Albion sung 
With their own praise the echoing valleys rung; 
His bounding muse o'er every mountain rode, 
And every river warbled where he flowed ;" 

but T may say that if, instead of sending his muse to ride over 
the mountains, and resting contented with her report, he had 
ridden or walked over them himself, his poem would better 
have deserved that praise for accuracy which has been be- 
stowed upon it by critics who had themselves no know- 
ledge which could enable them to say whether it was accu- 
rate or not. Camden was more diligent : he visited some of 
the remotest counties of which he wrote. 

This is not said with any intention of detracting from Mi- 
chael Drayton's fame : the most elaborate criticism could 
neither raise him above the station which he holds in 
English literature, nor degrade him from it. He is extolled 
not beyond the just measure of his deserts in his epitaph 
which has been variously ascribed to Ben Jonson, to Ran- 
dolph, and to Quarles, but with most probability to the for- 
mer, who knew, and admired, and loved him. 

He was a poet by nature, and carefully improved his tal- 
ent ; one who sedulously laboured to deserve the approba- 
tion of such as were capable of appreciating, and cared 
nothing for the censures which others might pass upon him. 
" Like me that list," he says, 

" my honest rhymes. 
Nor care for critics, nor regard the times." 

A.nd though he is not a poet virum volitare per orai nor one 



166 THE DOCTOR. 

of those whose better fortune it is to live in the hearts of 
their devoted admirers, yet what he deemed his greatest 
work will be preserved by its subject; some of his minor 
poems have merit enough in their execution to ensure their 
preservation, and no one who studies poetry as an art will 
think his time misspent in perusing the whole — if he have 
any real love for the art which he is pursuing. The youth 
who enters upon that pursuit without a feeling of respect 
and gratitude for those elder poets, who by their labours 
have prepared the way for him, is not likely to produce any- 
thing himself that will be held in remembrance by posterity. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. P. I. 

ANECDOTES OF PETER HEYLYN AND LIGHTFOOT, EXEMPLIFYING 
THAT GREAT KNOWLEDGE IS NOT ALWAYS APPLICABLE TO 
LITTLE things; AND THAT AS CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME, SO 
IT MAY WITH EQUAL TRUTH SOMETIMES BE SAID THAT KNOW- 
LEDGE ENDS THERE. 

A scholar in his study knows the stars, 
Their rr>otion and their influence, which are fix'd, 
And which are wandering ; can decipher seas, 
And give each several land his proper bounds ; 
But set him to the compass, he's to seek, 
Where a plain pilot can direct his course 
From hence unto both the Indies. 

Hey WOOD, 

There was a poet who wrote a descriptive poem, and then 
took a journey to see the scenes which he had described. 
Better late than never, he thought ; and thought wisely in so 
thinking. Drayton was not likely to have acted thus upon 
after consideration, if in the first conception of his subject 
he did not feel sufficient ardour for such an undertaking. It 
would have required indeed a spirit of enterprise as unusual 
in those days as it is ordinary now. Many a long day's 
ride must he have taken over rough roads, and in wild coun- 
tries ; and many a weary step would it have cost him, and 
many a poor lodging must he have put up with at night, 
where he would have found poor fare, if not cold comfort. 
So he thought it enough, in many if not most parts, to travel 
by the map, and believed himself to have been sufficiently 
" punctual and exact in giving unto every province its pecu- 
liar bounds, in laying out their several landmarks, tracing 
the course of most of the principal rivers, and setting forth 
the situation and estate of the chiefest towns." 



THE DOCTOR. 167 

Peter Heylyn,who speaks thus of his own exactness in a 
work partaking enough of the same nature as the Polyolbion 
to be remembered here, though it be in prose, and upon a 
wider subject, tells a humorous anecdote of himself, in the 
preface to his Cosmography. " He that shall think this 
work imperfect," says he, " (though I confess it to be nothing 
but imperfections,) for some deficiencies of this kind, may be 
likened to the country f^low (in Aristophanes, if my mem- 
ory fail not) who picked a great quarrel with the map be- 
cause he could not find where his own farm stood. And 
such a country customer I did meet with once, a servant of 
my elder brother, sent by him with some horses to Oxford, 
to bring me and a friend of mine unto his house ; who having 
lost his way as we passed through the forest of Whichwood, 
and not being able to recover any beaten track, did very 
earnestly entreat me to lead the way, till I had brought him 
past the woods to the open fields. Which when I had re- 
fused to do, as I had good reason, alleging that I had never 
been there before, and therefore that I could not tell which 
way to lead him, ' That's strange !' said he ; ' I have heard 
my old master, your father, say that you made a book of all 
the world ; and cannot you find your way out of the wood V " 

Peter Heylyn was one who fell on evil times, and on 
whom, in consequence, evil tongues have fallen. But he 
was an able, honest, brave man, who " stood to his tackling 
when he was tasted." And if thou hast not read his Survey 
of the State of France, reader, thou hast not read one of our 
liveliest books of travels in its lighter parts ; and one of the 
wisest and most replete with information that ever was writ- 
ten by a young man. 

His more learned contemporary Lightfoot, who steered a 
safer but not so straight a course, met with an adventure not 
unlike that of Heylyn's in the forest ; but the application, 
which in the cosmographist's case was ridiculously made by 
an ignorant and simple man, was in this instance self-origi- 
nated. 

Lightfoot had promised to set forth as an accompaniment 
to his Harmony of the Evangelists, " A chorographical de- 
scription of the Land of Canaan, and those adjoining Places, 
that we have occasion to look upon as we read the Gospels." 

" I went on in that work," he says, " a good while, and 
that with much cheerfulness and content ; for methought a 
Talmudical survey and history of the land of Canaan, (not 
omitting collections to be taken up out of the Scripture, and 
other writers,) as it would be new and rare, so it might not 
prove unwelcome nor unprofitable to those that delighted in 
such a subject." It cost him as much pains to give the de- 
scription as it would have done to travel thither ; but, says 
one of his editors, " the unhappy chance that hindered the 
publishing this elaborate piece of his, which he had brought 



168 THE DOCTOR. 

to pretty good perfection, was the edition of Doctor Fuller's 
Pisgah Sight ; great pity it was that so good a book should 
have done so much harm : for that book, handhng the same 
matters and preventing his, stopped his resolution of letting 
his labours on that subject see the light. Though he went a 
way altogether different from Dr. Fuller ; and so both might 
have shown their faces together in the world; and the 
younger sister, if we may make comparisons, might have 
proved the fairer of the two." 

It is pleasant to see how liberally and equitably both Light- 
foot and Fuller speak upon this matter. " But at last," says 
the former, " I understood that another workman, a far better 
artist than myself, had the description of the land of Israel, 
not only in hand, but even in the press ; and was so far 
got before me in that travel that he was almost at his 
journey's end, when I was but little more than setting 
out. It vk^as grievous to me to have lost my labour, if I 
should now sit down ; and yet I thought it wisdom not to 
lose more in proceeding further, when one on the same 
subject, and of far more abilities in it, had got the start so 
far before me. 

" And although I supposed, and at last was assured, even 
by that author himself, (my very learned and worthy friend,) 
that we should not thrust nor hinder one another any whit at 
all, though we both went at once in the perambulation of 
that land, because he had not meddled with that rabbinic 
way that I had gone ; yet, when I considered what it was to 
glean after so clean a reaper, and how rough a Talmudical 
pencil would seem after so fine a pen, I resolved to sit down 
and to stir no more in that matter, till time and occasion 
did show me more encouragement thereunto, than as yet I 
saw. And thus was my promise fallen to the ground, not 
by any carelessness or forgetfulness of mine, but by the 
happy prevention of another hand, by whom the work is 
likely to be better done. Yet was I unwiUing to suffer my 
word utterly to come to nothing at all, though I might evade 
my promise by this fair excuse : but I was desirous to pay 
the reader something in pursuance of it, though it were not 
in this very same coin, nor the very same sum, that I had 
undertaken. Hereupon I turned my thoughts and my endeav- 
ours to a description of the temple after the same manner, 
and from the same authors, that I had intended to have 
described the land; and that the rather, not only that I 
might do something towards making good my promise ; but 
also, that by a trial in a work of this nature of a lesser bulk, 
1 might take some pattern and assay how the other, which 
would prove of a far larger pains and volume, would be ac- 
cepted, if I should again venture upon it." 

Lightfoot was sincere in the commendation which he be- 
stowed upon Fuller's diligence, and his felicitous way of 



THE DOCTOR. 169 

writing. And Fuller on his part rendered justice in the 
same spirit to Lightfoot's well-known and peculiar erudi- 
tion. " Far be it from me," he says, " that our pens should 
fall out, like the herdsmen of Lot and Abraham, the land not 
being able to bear them both, that they might dwell together. 
No such want of room in this subject, being of such latitude 
and receipt, that both we and hundreds more, busied to- 
gether therein, may severally lose ourselves in a subject of 
such capacity. The rather, because we embrace several 
courses in this our description ; it being my desire and de- 
light to stick only to the written word of God, while my 
worthy friend takes in the choicest rabbinical and Talmud- 
ical relations, being so well seen in these studies, that it is 
questionable whether his skill or my ignorance be the greater 
therein." 

Now then, (for now and then go thus lovingly together, 
in familiar English,) after these preliminaries, the learned 
Lightfoot, who at seven years of age, it is said, could not 
only read fluently the biblical Hebrew, but readily converse 
in it, may tell his own story. 

" Here by the way," he says, " I cannot but mention, and 
I think I can never forget, a handsome and deserved check 
that mine own lieart, meeting with a special occasion, did 
give me, upon the laying down of the other task, and the 
undertaking of this, for my daring to enter either upon the 
one or the other. That very day wherein I first set pen to 
paper to draw up the description of the temple, having but 
immediately before laid aside my thoughts of the descrip- 
tion of the land, I was necessarily called out, towards the 
evening, to go to view a piece of ground of mine own, con- 
cerning which some litigiousness was emerging, and about 
to grow. The field was but a mile from my constant resi- 
dence and habitation, and it had been in mine owning divers 
years together ; and yet till that very time, had I never seen 
it, nor looked after it, nor so much as knew whereabout it 
lay. It was very unlikely I should find it out myself, being 
so utterly ignorant of its situation ; yet because I desired to 
walk alone, for the enjoying of my thoughts upon that task 
that I had newly taken in hand, I took some direction which 
way to go, and would venture to find out the field myself 
alone. I had not gone far, but I was at a loss ; and whether 
I went right or vvroog I could not tell ; and if right thither, 
yet I knew not how to do so further; and if wrong, I knev/ 
not which way would prove the right, and so in seeking my 
ground I had lost myself. Here my heart could not but take 
me to task ; and, reflecting upon what my studies were then, 
and had lately been upon, it could not but call me fool ; and 
methought it spake as true to me as ever it had done in all 
my life — but only when it called me sinner. A fool that 
was so studious, and had been so searching about things 



170 THE DOCTOR. 

remote, and that so little concerned my interest — and yet 
was so neglective of what was near me, both in place and in 
my particular concernment ! And a fool again, who went 
about to describe to others, places and buildings that lay 
so many hundred miles off, as from hence to Canaan, and 
under so many hundred years' ruins — and yet was not able 
to know, or find the way to a field of mine own, that lay so 
near me I 

" I could not but acknowledge this reproof to be both 
seasonable, and seasoned both with truth and reason ; and it 
so far prevailed with me, that it not only put me upon a res- 
olution to lay by that work that I had newly taken in hand 
that morning, but also to be wiser in my bookishness for the 
time to come, than for it, and through it, to neglect and sink 
my estate as I had done. And yet within a little time after 
I know not how, I was fallen to the same studies and studi- 
ousness again — had got my laid-up task into my hands 
again before I was aware — and was come to a determination 
to go on in that work, because I had my notes and collec- 
tions ready by me as materials for it ; and when that was 
done, then to think of the advice that my heart had given 
me, and to look to mine own business. 

" So I drew up the description of the temple itself, and 
with it the history of the temple service." 

Lightfoot's heart was wise when it admonished him of 
humility ; but it was full of deceit when it read him a lesson 
of worldly wisdom, for which his conscience and his better 
mind would have said to him " Thou fool !" if he had fol- 
lowed it. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. P. I. 

THE READER IS LED TO INFER THAT A TRAVELLER WHO STOPS 
UPON THE WAY TO SKETCH, BOTANIZE, ENTOMOLOGIZE, OR MIN- 
ERALOGIZE, TRAVELS WITH xMORE PLEASURE AND PROFIT TO 
HIMSELF THAN IF HE WERE IN THE MAIL COACH. 

Non servio materiae sed indulgeo ; quae quo ducic sequendum est, non 
invitat. — Seneca. 

Fear not, my patient reader, that I should lose myself and 
bewilder you, either in the Holy Land, or Whichwood Forest, 
or in the wide fields of the Polyolbion, or in Potteric Carr,- 
or in any part of the country about Doncaster, most fortu- 
nate of English towns for circumstances which I have 
already stated, and henceforth to be the most illustrious, as 



THE DOCTOR. 171 

having been the place where my never lo be forgotten phi- 
losopher and friend passed the greater part of his innocent, 
and useful, and happy life. Good patient reader, you may 
confide in me as in one who always knows his whereabout, 
and whom the goddess Upibiha will keep in the right way. 

In treating of that flourishing and every way fortunate 
town, I have not gone back to visionary times, like the author 
who wrote a description and drew a map of Anglesea, asit 
was before the flood. Nor have I touched upon the ages 
when hyenas prowled over what is now Doncaster race 
ground, and great lizards, huge as crocodiles, but with long 
necks and short tails, took their pleasure in Potteric Carr. 
I have not called upon thee, gentle and obsequious reader, 
to accompany me into a praeadamite world, nor even into 
the antediluvian one. We began with the earliest mention of 
Doncaster — no earlier ; and shall carry our summary notices 
of its history to the doctor's time — no later. And if some- 
times the facts on which I may touch should call forth 
thoughts, and those thoughts remind me of other facts, anec- 
dotes leading to reflection, and reflection producing more 
anecdotes, thy pleasure will be consulted in all this, my good 
and patient reader, and thy profit also as much as mine ; nay, 
more in truth, for 1 might think upon all these things in 
silence, and spare myself the trouble of relating them. 

Oh reader, had you in your mind 

Such stores as silent thought can bring, 

Oh gentle reader, you would find 
A tale in everything !* 

I might muse upon these things and let the hours pass by 
unheeded as the waters of a river in their endless course. 
And thus I might live in other years — with those who are 
departed, in a world of my own, by force of recollection ; 
or by virtue of sure hope in that world which is theirs now, 
and to which I shall ere long be promoted. 

For thy pleasure, reader, and for thy improvement, I take 
upon myself the pains of thus materializing my spiritual 
stores. Alas ! their earthly uses would perish with me 
unless they were thus imbodied ! 

" The age of a cultivated mind," says an eloquent, and 
wise, and thoughtful author, " is often more complacent, and 
even more luxurious than the youth. It is the reward of 
the due use of the endowments bestowed by nature ; while 
they who in youth have made no provision for age, are left 
like an unsheltered tree, stripped of its leaves and its 
branches, shaking and withering before the cold blasts of 
winter. 

" In truth nothing is so happy to itself and so attractive 

* Wordsworth. 
8* 



172 THE DOCTOR. 

to others, as a genuine and ripened imagination, that knows 
its own powers, and throws forth its treasures with frank- 
ness and fearlessness. The more it produces, the more capa- 
ble it becomes of production ; the creative faculty grows 
by indulgence ; and the more it combines, the more means 
and varieties of combinations it discovers. 

"When death comes to destroy that mysterious and 
magical union of capacities and acquirements which has 
brought a noble genius to this point of power, how frightful 
and lamentable is the effect of the stroke that stops the cur- 
rent which was wont to put this mighty formation into ac- 
tivity ! Perhaps the incomprehensible spirit may have acted 
in conjunction with its corporeal adherents to the last. 
Then in one moment, what darkness and destruction follows 
a single gasp of breath '."* 

This fine passage is as consolatory in its former part, as it 
is gloomy at the conclusion ; and it is gloomy there because 
the view which is there taken is imperfect. Our thoughts, 
our reminiscences, our intellectual acquirements, die with us 
to this world — but to this world only. If they are what they 
ought to be, they are treasures which we lay up for heaven. 
That which is of the earth, earthly, perishes with wealth, 
rank, honours, authority, and other earthly and perishable 
things. But nothing that is worth retaining can be lost. 
When Ovid says in Ben Jonson's play — 

" We pour out our affections with our blood, 
And with our blood's affections fade our loves," 

the dramatist makes the Roman poet speak like a sensualist, 
as he was, and the philosophy is as false as it is foul. Affec- 
tions well placed and dutifully cherished ; friendships hap- 
pily formed and faithfully maintained ; knowledge acquired 
with worthy intent, and intellectual powers that have been 
diligently improved as the talents which our Lord and Master 
has committed to our keeping; these will accompany us 
into another state of existence, as surely as the soul in that 
state retains its identity and its consciousness. 

* Sir Egerton Brydges, 



THE DOCTOR. 173 



INTERCHAPTER IV. 

tTYMOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES CONCERNING THE REMAINS OF VARI- 
OUS TRIBES OR FAMILIES MENTIONED IN SCRIPTURAL HISTORY. 

All things are big with jest ; nothing that's plain 
But may be witty if thou hast the vein. 

Herbert. 

That the lost ten tribes of Israel may be found in London, 
is a discovery which any person may suppose he has made, 
when he walks for the first time from the city to Wapping. 
That the tribes of Judah and Benjamin flourish there is 
known to all mankind ; and from them have sprung the 
Scripites, and the Omniumites, and the Threepercentites. 

But it is not so well known that many other tribes noticed 
in the Old Testament are to be found ia this island of Great 
Britain. 

There are the Hittites, who excel in one branch of gym- 
nastics. And there are the Amorites. who are to be found in 
town and country ; and there are the Gadites, who frequent 
watering-places, and take picturesque tours. 

Among the Gadites I shall have some of my best readers, 
who being in good humour with themselves and with every- 
thing else, except on a rainy day, will even then be in good hu- 
mour with me. There will be the Amorites in their com- 
pany; and among the Amorites, too, there will be some who, 
in the overflowing of their love, will have some liking to 
spare for the doctor and his faithful memorialist. 

The poets, those especially who deal in erotics, lyrics, sen- 
timentals, or sonnets, are the Ah-oh-ites. 

The gentlemen who speculate in chapels are the Puh- 
ites. 

The chief seat of the Simeonites is at Cambridge; but 
they are spread over the land. So are the Man-ass-ites, of 
whom the finest specimens are to be seen in St. James's- 
street, at the fashionable time of day for exhibiting the dress 
and the person upon the pavement. 

The freemasons are of the family of the Jachinites. 

The female Haggites are to be seen, in low life wheeling 
barrows, and in high life seated at card tables. 

The Shuhamites are the cordwainers. 

The Teamanites attend the sales of the East India Com^ 
pany. 

Sir James Mackintosh, and Sir James Scarlett, and Sir 
James Graham, belong to the Jim-nites. 



174 THE DOCTOR. 

Who are the Gazathites if the people of London are not, 
where anything is to be seen 1 All of them are the Gettites 
when they can, all would be Havites if they could. 

The journalists should be Geshurites, if they answered to 
their profession ; instead of this they generally turn out to 
be Geshuwrongs. 

There are, however, three tribes in England, not named in 
the Old Testament, who considerably outnumber all the rest. 
These are the High Vulgarites, who are the children of Ra- 
hank and Phashan : the Middle Vulgarites, who are the chil- 
dren of Mammon and Terade, and the Low Vulgarites, who 
are the children of Tahag, Rahag, and Bohobtay-il. 

With the Low Vulgarites I have no concern ; but with the 
other two tribes, much. Well it is that some of those who 
are fruges consumere nati, think it proper that they should 
consume books also : if they did not, what a miserable crea- 
ture wouldst thou be, Henry Colburn, who art their book- 
seller ! I myself have that kind of respect for the consumers 
which we ought to feel for everything useful. If not the salt 
of the earth, they are its manure, without which it could not 
produce so abundantly. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. P. L 

A CHAPTER FOR THE INFORMATION OF THOSE WHO MAY VISIT 
DONCASTER, AND ESPECIALLY OF THOSE WHO FREQUENT THE 
RACES THERE. 

My good lord, there is a corporation, 
A body — a kind of body. 

MiDDLETON. 

Well, reader, I have told thee something concerning the 
topography of Doncaster : and now in due order, and as in 
duty bound, will I give thee a sketch of its history ; " summa 
sequar fastigia rerum^'' with becoming brevity, according to 
my custom, and in conformity with the design of this book. 
The nobility and gentry who attend the races there will find 
it very agreeable to be well acquainted with everything re- 
lating to the place : and I particularly invite their attention 
to that part of the present chapter which concerns the Don- 
caster charters, because, as a wise and ancient author hath 
said, Turpe est homini nohili ejus civitatis in qua versetur,jus ig- 
norare, which may thus be applied, that every gentleman who 
frequents Doncaster races ought to know the form and his- 
tory of its corporation. 



THE DOCTOR. 175 

In Edward the Confessor's reign the soccage part of Don- 
caster and of some adjoining townships was under the manor 
of Hexthorp, though in the topsyturveying course of time 
Hexthorp has become part of the soke of Doncaster. Earl 
Tostig was the lord of that manor, one of Earl Godwin's 
sons, and one who holds like his father no honourable place 
in the records of those times, but who m the last scene of 
his life displayed a heroism that may well redeem his name. 
The manor being two miles and a half long, and one and a 
half broad, was valued at eighteen pounds yearly rent ; but 
when Doomsday book was compiled that rent had decreased 
one third. It had then been given by the conqueror to his half 
brother Robert, earl of Montaigne in Normandy, and of Corn- 
wall in England. The said earl was a lay pluralist of the 
first magnitude, and had no fewer than seven hundred and 
fifty manors bestowed upon him as his allotment of the con- 
quered kingdom. He granted the lordship and soke of Don- 
caster, with many other possessions, to Nigel de Fossard, 
wliich Nigel is believed to have been the Saxon noble who 
at the time of the conquest held these same possessions 
under the crown. 

The Fossard family ended in an heiress in Coeur de Lion's 
reign ; and the only daughter of that heiress was given in 
marriage by John Lackland to Peter de Malolieu, or Maulay, 
as a reward for his part in the murder of Prince Arthur. 
Peter de Maulay bore, as such a service richly deserved, an 
ill name in the nation, being moreover a favourite of King 
John's, and believed to be one of his evil counsellors as well 
as of his wicked instruments ; but the name was in good 
odour with his descendants, and was borne accordingly by 
eight Peters in succession. The eighth had no male issue ; 
he left two daughters, and daughters are said by Fuller to be 
*' silent strings sending no sound to posterity, but losing their 
own surnames in their matches." Ralph Salvayne, or Sal- 
vin, a descendant of the younger co-heiress, in the reign of 
James I., claimed the lordship of Doncaster; and William 
his son, after a long suit with the corporation, resigned his 
claim for a large sum of money. 

The burgesses had obtained their charter from Richard I., 
in the fifth year of his reign, that king confirming to them 
their soke, and the town or village of Danecastre, to hold of 
him and his heirs, by the ancient rent, and over and above that 
rent, by an annual payment at the same time of twenty-five 
marks of silver. For this grant the burgesses gave the king 
fifty marks of silver, and were thereby entitled to hold their 
soke and town " eflfectually and peaceably, freely and quietly, 
fully and honourably, with all the liberties and free customs 
to the same appertaining, so that none hereupon might them 
disturb." This charter, with all and singular the things there- 



170 THE DOCTOR. * 

incontained, was ratified and confirmed by Richard II. td his be- 
loved the then burgesses of the aforesaid town. 

The burgesses, fearing that they might be molested in the 
enjoyment of these their Uberties and free customs, through 
defect of a declaration and specification of the same, peti- 
tioned Edward IV., in tlie seventh year of his reign, that he 
would graciously condescend those liberties and free cus- 
toms, under specifical declaration and express terms, to them 
and their heirs and successors, incorporating them, and 
making them persons fit and capable, with perpetual succes- 
sion. Accordingly the king granted that Doncaster should 
be a free borough, and that the burgesses, tenants, resiants, 
and inhabitants, and their successors, should be free bur- 
gesses, and might have a guild merchant, and continue to 
have the same liberties and free customs as they and their 
predecessors had theretofore reasonably used and enjoyed. 
And that they from thenceforth might be, in reality and name, 
one body and one perp^^tual community ; and every year 
choose out of themselves one fit person to be the mayor, 
and two other fit persons for the sergeants at mace, of the 
same town, within the same town dwelling, to rule and gov- 
ern the community aforesaid for ever. And further of his 
more abundant grace the king granted that the cognizance 
of all manner of pleas of debt, trespass, covenant, and all 
manner of other causes and contracts whatsoever within the 
same borough, should be holden before the mayor. He 
granted also to the corporation the power of attachment for 
debt by their sergeants at mace ; and of his abundant grace 
that the mayor should hold and exercise the office of coroner 
also during his year; and should be also a justice and keeper 
of the king's peace within the said borough. And he granted 
them of his same abundant grace the right of having a fair at 
the said borough every year upon the vigil, and upon the 
feast, and upon the morrow of the annunciation of the blessed 
Virgin Mary, to be held, and for the same three days to con^ 
tinue, with all liberties and free customs to this sort of fair ap- 
pertaining, unless that fair should be to the detriment of the 
neighbouring fairs. 

There appear to this charter among others as witnesses, 
the memorable names of " our dearest brothers, George of 
Clarence, and Richard of Gloucester, dukes ; Richard Wyde- 
vile de Rivers, our treasurer of England, earl ; and our beloved 
and faithful William Hastynges de Hastynges, chamberlain 
of our household, and Anthony Wydevile de Scales, knights." 
The charter is moreover decorated with the armorial bear- 
ings of the corporation, a lion sergeant, upon a cushion pow- 
dered ermine, holding in his paws and legs a banner with the 
castle thereon depicted, and this motto, Son Comfort el 
Liesse, his Comfort and Joy. 

Henry VII. enlarged the charter, giving of his special grace 



THE DUU'lOK. 



177 



to the mayor and community all and singular the messuages, 
marshes, lands, tenements, rents, reversions, and services, 
advowsons of churches, chantries, and chapels, possessions, 
and all hereditaments whatsoever within the lordship and its 
dependancies, " with the court leets, view of frank pledges 
courts, waters, mills, entry and discharge of waters, fairs, 
markets, tolls, picages, stallages, pontages, passages, and all 
and singular profits, commodities, and emoluments whatso- 
ever within that lordship and its precincts to the king, his 
heirs and successors, howsoever appertaining, or lately be- 
longing. And all and singular the issues, revenues, and 
profits of the aforesaid courts, view of frank pledge, waters, 
mills, fairs, markets, tolls, picages, stallages, pontages, pas- 
sages, and the rest of the premises, in what manner soever 
accruing or arising." For this the mayor and community 
were to pay into the exchequer yearly in equal portions, at 
the feasts of St. Michael the Archangel and Easter, without 
fee or any other charge, the sum of seventy and four pounds, 
thirteen shillings, eleven pence, and a halfpenny. Further 
of his more extensive grace, he granted them to hold twice 
in every year a leet or view of frank pledge ; and that they 
might have the superintendency of the assize of bread and 
ale, and other victuals vendible whatsoever, and the correc- 
tion and punishment of the same, and all and whatsoever 
which to a leet or view of frank pledge appertaineth, or ought 
to appertain. And that they might have all issues, and profits, 
and perquisites, fines, penalties, redemptions, forfeitures, and 
amerciaments in all and singular these kind of leets, or frank 
pledge to be forfeited, or assessed, or imposed ; and more- 
over, wayf, stray f, infang thief, and outfang thief; and the 
goods and chattels of all and singular felons, and the goods 
of fugitives, convicts, and attainted, and the goods and chat- 
tels of outlaws and waived; and the wreck of sea when it 
should happen, and goods and chattels whatsoever confiscated 
within the manor, lordship, soke, towns, villages, and the rest 
of the premises of the precincts of the same, and of every of 
them, found or to be found, for ever. 

In what way any wreck of sea could be thrown upon any 
part of the Doncastrian jurisdiction, is a question which 
might have occasioned a curious discussion between Corpo- 
ral Trim and his good master. How it could happen 1 can- 
not comprehend, unless " the fatal Welland," according to 
old saw, 

which God forbid! 
Should drown all Holland with his excrement.* 

Nor, indeed, do I see how it could happen then, unless Hum- 
ber should at the same time drown all Lindsey, and the whole 

* Spenser. 



178 THE DOCIOR. 

of the Yorkshire plain, and Trent bear a part also with all 
his thirty tributary streams, and the plain land of all the 
midland counties be once more flooded, " as it was in the 
days of Noah." But if the official person who drew up this 
charter of Henry the Seventh contemplated any such con- 
tingency, he must have been a whimsical person, and, more- 
over, an unreasonable one, not to have considered that Don- 
caster Itself must be destroyed by such a catastrophe, and 
consequently that its corporation even then could derive no 
benefit from wreck at sea. 

Furthermore, of his more abundant grace King Henry 
granted to the mayor and community that they might hold two 
markets in the week for ever, to wit, every Tuesday and every 
Saturday ; and that they might hold a second fair, which was 
to be upon the vigil, and upon the day of St. James the 
apostle, and upon the morrow of the day immediately fol- 
lowing to continue : and that they might choose a recorder, 
and hold a weekly court in their Guild Hall, which court 
should be a court of record ; and that the recorder and three 
of the aldermen should be justices as well as the mayor, 
and that they might have a jail within the precincts of their 
town. 

Henry VHI. confirmed this his father's charter, and Eliza- 
beth that her father's confirmation. In the next reign, when 
the corporation, after having " endured the charge of many 
great and tedious suits," had compounded with Ralph Selvin 
for what they called his pretended title, they petitioned the 
king that he would be pleased to accept from them a surren- 
der of their estates, together with an assurance of Salvin's 
title, and then graciously assure and convey the said manors 
and premises to them and their successors, so to secure 
them against any further litigation. 

This accordingly was done. In the fourth year after the 
restoration, the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses petitioned 
for a ratification of their existing privileges, and for an en- 
largement of them, which Charles II. granted, " the borough 
being an ancient and populous borough, and he being desirous 
that for the time to come, for ever, one certain and invariable 
method might be had of, for, and in the preservation of our 
peace, and in the rule and governance of the same borough, 
and of our people in the same inhabiting, and of others re- 
sorting thither ; and that that borough in succeeding times 
might be and remain a borough of harmony and peace, to 
the fear and terror of the wicked, and for the support and 
reward of the good." Wherefore, he the king, of his special 
grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, willed, granted, 
constituted, declared, and confirmed, and by his then presents 
did will, grant, constitute, declare, and confirm, that Doncas- 
ter should be, and continue for ever, a free borough itself; 
and that the mayor and community, or commonalty thereof, 



THE DOCTOR. i70 

should be one body corporate and politic in reality, deed, and 
name, by the name of mayor, aldermen, and burgesses of the 
borough of Doncaster in the county of York, and by that 
name be capacitated and enabled to plead and to be im- 
pleaded, answer and be answered, defend and be defended ; 
and to have, purchase, receive, possess, give, grant, and 
demise. 

This body corporate and politic, which was to have per- 
petual, succession, was by the charter appointed to consist 
of one mayor, twelve aldermen, and twenty-four capital bur- 
gesses ; the aldermen to be " of the better and more excel- 
lent inhabitants of the borough," and the capital burgesses 
of the better, more reputable, and discreet, and these latter 
were to be " for ever in perpetual future times, the common 
council of the borough." The three estates of the borough, 
as they may be called, in court or convocation gathered 
together and assembled, were " invested with full authority, 
power, and ability of granting, constituting, ordaining, ma- 
king, and rendering firm, from time to time, such kind of laws, 
institutes, bylaws, ordinances, and constitutions, which to 
them, or the greater part of them, shall seem to be, accord- 
ing to their sound understandings, good, salutary, profitable, 
honest, or honourable, and necessary for the good rule and 
governance of the mayor, aldermen, and burgesses, and of all 
and singular, and other the inhabitants of the borough afore- 
said ; and of all the officers, ministers, artificers, and resiants 
whatsoever within the borough aforesaid, for the time being; 
and for the declaring in what manner and form the aforesaid 
mayor, aldermen, and burgesses, and all and singular other 
the ministers, officers, artificers, inhabitants, and resiants of 
the borough aforesaid, and their factors or agents, servants 
and apprentices, in their offices, callings, mysteries, artifices, 
and businesses, within the borough aforesaid, and the liberties 
of the same for the time being, shall have, behave, and use 
themselves, and otherwise for the more ultimate public good, 
common utility, and good regimen of the borough aforesaid." 
And for the victualling of the borough, and for the better pres- 
ervation, governance, disposing, letting, and demising of the 
lands, tenements, possessions, revenues, and hereditaments, 
vested in their body corporate, they had power to ordain and 
enforce such punishments, penalties, inflictions, and imprison- 
ments of the body, or by fines and amerciaments, or by both 
of them, against and upon all delinquents and offenders 
against these their laws as might to them seem necessary, 
so that nevertheless this kind of laws, ordinances, institutions, 
and constitutions be not repugnant, nor contrary to the laws 
and statutes of the kingdom. 

Persons refusing to accept the ofllce of mayor, alderman, 
capital burgess, or any other inferior office of the borough, 
except the recorders, might be committed to jail, till they 



180 THE DOCTOR. 

consented to serve, or fined at the discretion of the corpora- 
tion, and held fast in their jail till the fine was paid. 

This charter also empowered the corporation to keep a 
fair on the Saturday before Easter, and thenceforth on every 
alternate Saturday until the feast of St. Andrew, for cattle, 
and to hold at such times a court of pie-powder. 

James II. confirmed the corporation in all their rights and 
privileges, and by the charter of Charles II., thus confirmed, 
Doncaster is governed at this day. 

It was during the mayoralty of Thomas Pheasant that 
Daniel Dove took up his abode in Doncaster. 



CHAPTER XL. P. I. 

REMAJIKS ON THE ART OF VERBOSITY A RULE OF COCCEIUS, AND 

ITS APPLICATION TO THE LANGUAGE AND PRACTICE OF THE LAW. 

If they which employ their labour and travail about the public adminis 
tration of justice follow it only as a trade, with unquenchable and uncon- 
scionable thirst of gain, being not in heart persuaded that justice is God's 
own work, and themselves his agents in this business — the sentence of right 
God's own verdict, and themselves his priests to deliver it — formalities of 
justice do but serve to smother right, and that which was necessarily or- 
dained for the common good, is through shameful abuse made the cause 
of common misery. — Hooker. 

Reader, thou mayst perhaps have thought me at times dis- 
posed to be circumambagious in my manner of narration. 
But now, having cast thine eyes over the Doncaster charters, 
even in the abridged form in which 1 have considerately pre- 
sented them, thou knowest what a roundabout style is when 
amplified with all possible varieties of professional tautology. 

You may hear it exemplified to a certain degree in most 
sermons of the current standard, whether composed by those 
who inflict them upon their congregation, or purchased ready 
made and warranted orthodox as well as original. In a still 
greater degree you may hear it in the extempore prayers of 
any meetinghouse, and in those with which the so-called 
evangelical clergymen of the establishment think proper 
sometimes to prologize and epilogize their grievous dis- 
courses. But in tautology the lawyers beat the divines hol- 
low. 

Cocceius laid it down as a fundamental rule of interpreta- 
tion in theology that the words and phrases of Scripture 
are to be understood in every sense of which they are sus- 
ceptible ; that is, that they actually signify everything that 
they can possibly signify. The lawyers carry this rule fur- 
ther in their profession than the Leyden professor did in 



THE DOCTOR. 181 

his : they deduce from words not only everything that they 
can possibly signify, but sometimes a great deal more ; and 
sometimes they make them bear a signification precisely op- 
posite to what they were intended to express. 

That crafty politician who said the use of language is to 
conceal our thoughts did not go further in his theory than the 
members of the legal profession in their practice ; as every 
deed which comes from their hands may testify, and every 
court of law bears record. You employ them to express 
your meaning in a deed of conveyance, a marriage settle- 
ment, or a will ; and they so smother it with words, so en- 
velop it with technicalities, so bury it beneath redundancies 
of speech, that any meaning which is sought for may be 
picked out, to the confusion of that which you intended. 
Something at length comes to be contested : you go to a 
court of law to demand your right; or you are summoned 
into one to defend it. You ask for justice, and you receive 
a nice distinction — a forced construction — a verbal criticism. 
By such means yon are defeated and plundered in a civil 
cause ; and in a criminal one a slip of the pen in the endict- 
ment brings off the criminal scot free. As if slips of the pen 
in such cases were always accidental ! But because judges 
are incorruptible, (as, blessed be God ! they still are in this 
most corrupt nation,) and because barristers are not to be 
suspected of ever intentionally betraying the cause which 
they are fee'd to defend, it is taken for granted that the same 
incorruptibility, and the same principled integrity, or gentle- 
manly sense of honour which sometimes is its substitute, are 
to be found among all those persons who pass their miser- 
able lives in quilldriving, day after day, from morning tiU 
night, at a scrivener's desk, or in an attorney's office ! 



CHAPTER XLI. P. I. 

REVENUE OF THE CORPORATION OF DONCASTER WELL APPLIED 

DONCASTER RACES. 

Play not for gain, but sport : who plays for more 
Than he can lose with pleasure, stakes his heart ; 
Perhaps his wife's too, and whom she hath bore. 

Herbert. 

Well, gentle reader, we have made our way through the 
charters, and seen that the borough of Doncaster is, as it 
may be called, an imperium in imperio, or rngnum ; (or rather, 
if there were such word, regnvlum in regno — such a word 
there ought to be, and very probably was, and most certainly 



182 THE DOCTOR. 

would be if th^. Latin were a living language,) a little king- 
dom in itself, n^odelled not unhappily after the form of that 
greater one whereof it is a part ; differing from it for reasons 
so evident that it would be a mere waste of words and time 
to explain them — in being an elective instead of an hereditary- 
monarchy, and also because the monarchy is held only for a 
year, not for Hfe ; and differing in this respect likewise, that 
its three estates are analogous to the vulgar and mistaken 
notion of the English constitution, not to what that constitu- 
tion is as transmitted to us by our fathers. 

We have seen that its mayor, (or monarch,) its twelve 
aldermen, (or house of lords,) all being of the better and more 
excellent inhabitants, and its four-and-twenty capital bur- 
gesses, (or house of commons,) all of the better, more repu- 
table, and discreet Doncastrians, constitute one body corpo- 
rate and politic in reality, deed, and name, to the fear and 
terror of the wicked, and for the support and reward of the 
good; and that the municipal government has been thus 
constituted expressly to the end that Doncaster might re- 
main for ever a borough of harmony and peace : to the 
better effecting of which most excellent intent — a circum- 
stance which has already been adverted to — contributes 
greatly, to wit, that Doncaster sends no members to parlia- 
ment. 

Great are the mysteries of corporations ; and great the 
good of them when they are so constituted, and act upon 
such principles as that of Doncaster. 

There is an old song which says — 

" Oh London is a gallant town, 
A most renowned cily ; 
'Tis governed by the scarlet gown, 
Indeed, the more's the pity." 

The two latter verses could never be applied to Doncaster. 
In the middle of the last century the revenues of the corpo- 
ration did not exceed 1500Z. a year: at the beginning of this 
they had increased to nearly 6000^, and this income was 
principally expended, as it ought to be, for the benefit of the 
town. The pubhc buildings have been erected from these 
funds; and liberal donations made from them to the dispen- 
sary and other eleemosynary institutions. There is no con- 
stable assessment, none for paving and lighting the street; 
these expenses are defrayed by the corporation, and families 
are supplied with river water chiefly at its expense. 

Whether this body corporate should be commended or 
condemned for encouraging the horse races, by building a 
grand stand upon the course ; and giving annually a plate 
of the value of 501. to be run for, and two sums of twenty 
guineas each towards the stakes, is a question which will be 
answered by every one according to his estimate of right 



THE DOCTOR. 183 

and wrong. Gentlemen of the turf will approve highly of 
their conduct, so will those gentlemen whose characteristics 
are either light fingers or black legs. Put it to the vote in 
Doncaster, and there will be few voices against them ; take 
the sense of the nation upon it by universal suffrage, and 
there would be a triumphant majority in their favour. 

In this, and alas ! in too many other cases vox populi est 
vox diaholi. 

A greater number of families are said to meet each other 
at Doncaster races, than at any other meeting of the same 
kind in England. That such an assemblage contributes 
greatly to the gayety and prosperity of the town itself, and 
of the country round about, is not to be disputed. But horse 
races excite evil desires, call forth evil passions, encourage 
evil propensities, lead the innocent into temptation and give 
opportunities to the wicked. And the good which arises 
from such amusements, either as mere amusement, (which is 
in itself unequivocally a good when altogether innocent,) 
or by circulating money in the neighbourhood, or by tending 
to keep up an excellent breed of horses, for purposes of di- 
rect utility : these consequences are as dust in the balance 
when compared with the guilt and misery that arise from 
gambling. 

Lord Exeter and the Duke of Grafton may perhaps be of 
a different opinion. So should Mr. Gully whom Pindar may 
seem to have prophetically panegyrized as 

'OXu//7rtorf>cav 
'Av^pa, zivX apcTav 
ElpoVra— 01. 7. 1G2. 

That gentleman indeed may with great propriety congratu- 
late himself upon his knowledge of what is called the world, 
and the ability with which he has turned it to a good prac- 
tical account. But Lord Burleigh, methinks, would shake his 
head in the antechamber of heaven if he could read there 
the following paragraph from a Sunday newspaper ; — 

" Pleasures and Profits of the Turf. We stated in a 
former number that Lord Exeter's turf profits were for the 
previous season 26,000/. ; this was intended to include bets. 
But we have now before us a correct and consecutive ac- 
count of the Duke of Grafton's winnings from 1811 to 1829 
inclusive, taking in merely the value of the stakes for which 
the horses ran, and which amounts to no less a sum than 
99,211/. 35. id.^ or somewhat more than 5000Z. per annum. 
This, even giving in a good round sum for training and out- 
lay, will leave a sufficiently pleasant balance in hand ; to 5ay 
nothing of the betting book, not often, we believe, light in 
figures. His grace's greatest winnings v/ere in 1822 and 
1825 : in the former of these years they amounted to 11,364/, 
5s. ; in the latter 12,608/. 16s. 8c/." 



184 



THE DOCTOR. 



It is to be hoped that the duke has with his crest and 
coronet his motto also upon the covers of his racing and 
betting books, and upon his prize plates and cups; 

Et Decus et Preyium Recti. 

Before we pass from the race ground let me repeat to the 
reader a wish of Horace Walpoie's, that " some attempt 
were made to ennoble our horse races, by associating better 
arts with the courses, as by contributing for odes, the best 
of which should be rewarded by medals. Our nobiHty," says 
he, " would find their vanity gratified; for as the pedigrees 
of their steeds would soon grow tiresome, their own gene- 
alogies would replace them, and in the mean time poetry and 
medals would be improved. Their lordships would have 
judgment enough to know if the horse (which should be the 
impression on one side) were not well executed; and as I 
hold that there is no being more difficult to draw well than 
a horse, no bad artist could be employed. Such a beginning 
would lead further; and the cup or plate for the prize might 
rise into beautiful vases.'' 

Pity that the hint has not been taken, and an auxiliary 
sporting society formed for promoting the education of Pin- 
dars and Benvenuto Cellinis ! 



INTERCHAPTER V. 

WHEREIN THE AUTHOR MAKES KNOWN HIS GOOD INTENTIONS TC 
ALL READERS, AND OFFERS GOOD ADVICE TO SOME OF THEM. 

I can write, and talk too, as soft as other men, with submission to better 
judgments, and 1 leave it to you, gentlemen. I am but one, and J always distrust 
myself. I only hint my thoughts. YouUl please to consider whether you will 
not think that it may seem to deserve your consideration. This is a taking way 
of speaking. But much good may do them that use it ! — Asgill. 

Reader, my compliments to you ! 

This is a form of courtesy which the Turks use in their 
compositions, and being so courteous a form, 1 have here 
adopted it. Why not 1 Turks though they are, we learned 
inoculation from them, and the use of coffee ; and hitherto 
we have taught them nothing but the use of tobacco in 
return. 

Reader, my compliments to you I 

Why is it that we hear no more of gentle readers ? Is it 
that having become critical in this age of magazines and 



THE DOCTOR. 



185 



reviews, they have ceased to be gentle? But all are not 
critical ; 

The baleful dregs 
Of these late ages— that ('ircean draught 
Of servitude and folly, have not yet- 
Yet have not so dishonour'd, so deform 'd 
The native judgment of the human soul.* 

In thus applying these lines I mean the servitude to which 
any rational man degrades his intellect when he submits to 
receive an opinion from the dictation of another, upon a point 
whereon he is just as capable of judging for himself — the in- 
tellectual servitude of being told by Mr. A., B., or C. wiiether 
he is to like a book or not, or why he is to like it: and the 
folly of supposing that the man who writes anonymously is 
on that very account entitled to more credit for judgment, 
erudition, and integrity than the author who comes forward 
in his own person, and stakes his character upon what he 
advances. 

All readers, however — thank Heaven, and what is left 
among us of that best and rarest of all senses called common 
sense — all readers, however, are not critical. There are 
still some who are willing to be pleased, and thankful for 
being pleased ; and who do not think it necessary that they 
should be able to parse their pleasure, like a lesson, and give 
a rule or a reason why they are pleased, or why they ought 
not to be pleased. There are still readers who have never 
read an essay upon taste ; and if they take my advice they 
nevetowill; for they can no more improve their taste by so 
doing, than they could improve their appetite or their diges- 
tion by studying a cookery book. 

1 have something to say to all classes of readers : and 
therefore having thus begun to speak of one, with that class 
I will proceed. It is to the youthful part of my lectors, 
(why not lectors as well as auditors V) it is virginib^s pueris- 
que that I now address myself. Young readers, you whose 
hearts are open, whose undejstandings are not yet hardened, 
and whose feelings are neither exhausted nor incrusted by 
the world, take from me a better rule than any professor of 
criticism will teach you ! 

Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good 
or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has 
it induced you to suspect that what you have been accus- 
tomed to think unlawful may after all be innocent, and that 
that may be harmless which you have hitherto been taught 
to think dangerous 1 Has it tended to make you dissatisfied 
and impatient under the control of others ; and disposed you 
to relax in that self-government, without which both the laws 

* Akenside. 



186 THE DOCTOR. 

of God and man tell us there can be no virtue — and conse- 
quently no happiness ] Has it attempted to abate your ad- 
miration and reverence for what is great and good, and to 
diminish in you the love of your country and your fellow- 
creatures 1 Has it addressed itself to your pride, your vanity, 
your selfishness, or any other of your evil propensities! 
Has it defiled the imagination with what is loathsome, and 
shocked the heart with what is monstrous ? Has it disturbed 
the sense of right and wrong which the Creator has implanted 
in the human soul ] If so — if you are conscious of all or 
any of these effects — or if having escaped from all, you have 
felt that such were the effects it was intended to produce, 
throw the book in the fire, whatever name it may bear in the 
title page ! Throw it in the fire, young man, though it should 
have been the gift of a friend ! — young lady, away with the 
whole set, though it should be the prominent furniture of a 
rosewood bookcase ! 



CHAPTER XLH. P. I. 

DONCASTER CHURCH THE RECTORIAL TITHES SECURED BY ARCH- 
BISHOP SHARP FOR HIS OWN FAMILY. 

Say, ancient edifice, thyself with years 
Grown gray, how long upon the hill has stood 
Thy weather-braving tower, and silent mark'd 
The human leaf in constant bud and fall ? 
The generations of deciduous man 
How often hast thou seen them pass away ! 

HURDIS. 

The ecclesiastical history of Doncaster is not so much to 
the credit of all whom it concerns as the municipal. Nigel 
Fossard in the year 1100, granted the advowson of its church 
10 St. Mary's Abbey, York ; and it was for rather more than 
two hundred years a rectory of two medieties, served by 
two resident rectors whom the abbey appointed. In 1303, 
Archbishop Corbridge appropriated it to the abbey, and or- 
dained it a perpetual vicarage. Fifty marks a year out of the 
profits of the rectory were then allowed for the vicar's sup- 
port, and he held the house and garden also which had for- 
merly appertained to one of the rectors. When upon the 
dissolution of the monasteries it fell to the crown, Henry VIII. 
gave it with other monastic impropriations to Archbishop 
Holgate, as some compensation for the valuable manors which 
he made the see of York alienate to himself. The church 
of Doncaster gained nothing by this transfer. The rectory 



THE DOCTOR. 187 

was secured by Archbishop Sharp for his own family. At 
the beginning of the present century it was worth from 
1000/. to 1200/. a year, while the vicar had only an annual 
income of 80/. charged upon that rectory, and '201. charged 
upon a certain estate. He had no tithes, no Easter offerings, 
and no other glebe than the churchyard, and an orchard at- 
tached to the vicarage. And he had to pay a curate to do 
the duty at Loversali church. 

There is one remarkable epitaph in this church upon a 
monument of the altar form, placed* just behindcfhe reading 
desk : — 

" How, how, who is here ? 
I Robin of Doncaster, and Margaret my fere. 

That I spent, that I had ; 

That I gave, that I have ; 

That i left, that I lost. A. D. 1579. 
Quoth Robertas Byrkes, who in this world did reign 
Threescore years and seven, and yet lived not one." 

Robin of Doncaster, as he is now familiarly called by per- 
sons connected, or acquainted with the church, is remem- 
bered only by this record which he has left of himself: per- 
haps the tomb was spared from the singularity of the epitaph, 
when prouder monuments in the same church were despoiled. 
He seems to have been one who thinking little of anything 
beyond the affairs of this world till the last year of his pil- 
grimage, Uved during that year a new life. It may also be in- 
ferred that his property was inherited by persons to whom he 
was bound by no other ties than those of cold affinity ; for if 
he had felt any concern for their welfare, he would not have 
considered those possessions as lost which were left to them. 

Perhaps a further inference may be fairly drawn, that 
though the deceased had stood in this uncomfortable relation 
to his heirs at law, he was too just a man to set aside the 
course of succession which the law appointed. They who 
think that in the testamentary disposal of their property they 
have a right to do whatever it is legally in their power to do, 
may find themselves wofully mistaken when they come to 
render their account. Nothing but the weightiest moral con- 
siderations can justify any one in depriving another of that 
which the law of the land would otherwise in its due course 
have assigned him. But rights of descent cease to be held sa- 
cred in public opinion in proportion as men consider them- 
selves exempt from all duty to their forefathers ; and that is 
in proportion as principles become sophisticated, and society 
more and more corrupt. 

St. George's is the only church in Doncaster, a town which 

in the year 1800 contained 1246 houses, 5697 souls : twenty 

years afterward the houses had increased to 1729, and the 

inhabitants to 8544. The state having made no other pro- 

9 



188 THE DOCTOR. 

vision for the religious instruction of the townspeople than 
one church, one vicar, and one curate — if the vicar from 
other revenues than those of his vicarage can afford to keep 
one — the far greater part of the inhabitants are left to be ab- 
senters by necessity, or dissenters by choice. It was the 
boast of the corporation in an address to Charles II., that 
they had not " one factious seditious person" in their town, 
*' being all true sons of the Church of England and loyal sub- 
jects ;" and that " in the height of all the late troubles and 
confusion (that is, during the civil wars and the common- 
wealth — which might more truly have been called the com- 
mon-wo) they never had any conventicle among them, the 
nurseries and seed plots of sedition and rebellion." There 
are conventicles there now of every denomination. And this 
has been occasioned by the great sin of omission in the gov- 
ernment, and the great sin of commission in that prelate who 
appropriated the property of the church to his own family. 
HoUis Pigot was vicar when Daniel Dove began to reside 
in Doncaster ; and Mr. Fawkes was his curate. - 



CHAPTER XLIII. P. I. 

ANTIQUITIES OF DONCASTER THE DE^ MATRES SAXON FONT 

THE CASTLE THE HALL CROSS. 

Vieux monuments — 

Las, peu a peu cendre vous devenez, 

Fable du peuple et publiques rapines ! 

Et bien qu'au Temps pour un temps facent guerre 

Les bastimens, si est ce que ie Temps 

Oeuvres et noms finablement atterre, 

Joachim du Bellay. 

The oldest monument in Doncaster is a Roman altar, 
which was discovered in the year 1781, in digging a cellar 
six feet deep, in St. Sepulchre's gate. An antiquary of Fer- 
rybridge congratulated the corporation " on the great honour 
resulting therefrom." 

Was it a great honour to Doncaster — meaning by Doncas- 
ter its mayor, its aldermen, its capital burgesses, and its 
whole people— was it, 1 say, an honour, a great honour to it, 
and these, and each and all of these, that this altar should 
have been discovered 1 Did the corporation consider it to 
be so ? Ought it to be so considered 1 Did they feel that 
pleasurable though feverish excitement at the discovery 
which is felt by the fortunate man at the moment when his 
deserts have obtained their honourable meed! Richard 



THE DOCTOR. 



189 



Staveley was mayor that year. Was it an honour to him and 
his mayoralty as it was to King- Ferdinand of Spain that 
when he was king, Christopher Columbus discovered the New 
World— or to Queen Ehzabeth, that Shakspeare flourished 
under her reign T Was he famous for it, as old Mr. Bram- 
ton Gurdon of Assington in Suffolk was famous, about the 
year 1627, for having three sons parliament men 1 If he was 
thus famous, did he " blush to find it fame," or smile that it 
should be accounted so ? What is fame ?- what is honour 1 
But I say no more. " He that hath knowledge spareth his 
words ; and he that shuttethhis lips is esteemed a man of un- 
derstanding." 

It is a votive altar, dedicated to the Decs Matres, with this 
inscription : — 

Matribus 

M. Nan- 

TONIUS. 

Orbiotal. 
votum. solvit. lubens. merito. 

and it is curious because it is only the third altar dedicated 
to those goddesses which has yet been found : the other 
two were also found in the north of England, one at Binches- 
ter, near Durham, and the other at Ribchester in Lancashire. 

Next in antiquity to this Roman altar, is a Saxon font in 
the church ; its date, which is now obliterated, is said to have 
been A. D. 1061. 

Not a wreck remains of anything that existed in Doncas- 
ter between the time when Orbiotal erected his altar to the 
local goddesses, and when the baptismal font was made : nor 
the name of a single individual ; nor memorial, nor tradition 
of a single event. 

There was a castle there, the dikes of which might partly 
be seen in Leland's time, and the foundation of part of the 
walls — nothing more, so long even then had it been demol- 
ished. In the area where it stood the church was built, and 
Leland thought that great part of the ruins of one building 
were used for the foundations of the other, and for filling up 
its walls. It is not known at what time the church was 
founded. There was formerly a stone built into its east 
end, with the date A. D. 1071 ; but this may more probably 
have been originally placed in the castle than the church. 
Different parts of the building are of different ages, and the 
beautiful tower is supposed to be of Henry the Third's age. 

The Hall Cross, as it is now called, bore this inscription : — 

ICEST : EST : LACRUiCE : OTE : D : TiLLi : A : Ki : alme : deij : 

EN : face : merci : am : 

There can be little doubt that this Otto de Tilli is the same 



190 THE DOCTOR. 

person whose name appears as a witness to several grants 
about the middle of the twelfth century, and who was senes- 
chal to the Earl of Conisborough. It stood uninjured till 
the Great Rebellion, when the Earl of Manchester's army, 
on their way from the South to the siege of York in the 
year 1644, chose to do the Lord service by defacing it. 
" And the said Earl of Manchester's men, endeavouring to 
pull the whole shank down, got a smith's forge hammer and 
broke off the four corner crosses ; and then fastened ropes 
to the middle cross, which was stronger and higher, thinking 
by that to pull the whole shank down. But a stone breaking 
off, and falling upon one of the men's legs, which was near- 
est it, and breaking his leg, they troubled themselves no 
more about it." This account, with a drawing of the cross 
in its former state, was in Fairfax's collection of antiquities, 
and came afterward into Thoresby's possession. The An- 
tiquarian Society published an engraving of it by that excel- 
lent and upright artist Vertue, of whom it is recorded that he 
never would engrave a fictitious portrait. The pillar was 
composed of five columns, a large one in the middle, and 
four smaller ones around it, answering pretty nearly to the 
cardinal points : each column was surmounted by a cross, 
that in the middle being the highest and proportionally large. 
There were numeral figures on the south face, near the top, 
which seem to have been intended for a dial ; the circumfer- 
ence of the pillar was eleven feet seven, the height eighteen 
feet. 

William Paterson, in the year of his mayoralty, 1678, 
"beautified it with four dials, ball, and fane;" in 1792, 
when Henry Heaton was mayor, it was taken down, be- 
cause of its decayed state, and a new one of the same form 
was erected by the roadside, a furlong to the south of its 
former site, on Hop-cross hill. This was better than de- 
stroying the cross ; and as either renovation or demolition 
had become necessary, the corporation are to be com- 
mended for what they did. But it is no longer the same 
cross, nor on the same site which had once been conse- 
crated, and where many a passing prayer had been breathed 
in simplicity and sincerity of heart. 

What signifies the change ? Both place and monument 
had long been desecrated. As little religious feeling was 
excited by it as would have been by the altar to the Dea 
Matres, if it had stood there. And of the hundreds of travel- 
lers who daily pass it, in or outside of stage coaches, in their 
own carriages, on horseback, or on foot ; and of the thou- 
sands who flock thither during the races ; and of the inhabit- 
ants of Doncaster itself, not a single soul cares whether it 
be the original cross or not, or where it was originally 
erected, or when, or wherefore, or by whom ! 

" I wish I did not !" said Dr. Dove, when some one ad- 



THE DOCTOR. 19] 

vanced this consideration with the intent of reconciling him 
to the change. " I am an old man," said he, " and in age 
we dislike all change as naturally, and, therefore, no doubt, 
as fitly as in youth we desire it. The youthful generation 
in their ardour for improvement and their love of novelty, 
strive to demolish what ought rehgiously to be preserved ; 
the elders in their caution and their fear endeavour to uphold 
what has become useless, and even injurious. Thus in the 
order of Providence we have both the necessary impulse and 
the needful check. 

" But I miss the old cross from its old place. More than 
fifty years had I known it there ; and if fifty years acquaint- 
ance did not give us some regard even for stocks and stones, 
we must be stocks and stones ourselves." 



CHAPTER XLIV. P. I. 

HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH DONCASTER THOM- 
AS, EARL OF LANCASTER EDWARD IV. ASKE's INSURRECTION 

ILLUSTRIOUS VISITERS JAMES I. BARNABEE CHARLES I.— » 

CHURCH LIBRARY. 

They unto whom we shall appear tedious, are in nowise injured by us, 
because it is in their own hands to spare that labour which they are not 
willing to endure. — Hooker. 

Nothing more than the scanty notices which have already 
been mentioned is recorded concerning the history of Don- 
caster, till King John ordered it " to be enclosed with hert- 
stone and pale, according as the ditch required ; and that a light 
brecost or barbican should be made upon the bridge, to defend 
the town if need should be." The bridge was then of wood; 
in the following reign the townsmen " gave aid to make a 
stone bridge there :" in that reign a hospital for sick and 
leprous people was built there, the priories of St. James and 
St. Nicholas founded a Dominican convent, and a Franciscan 
one. Henry VIII. slept there on his way to York. In the 
twenty- third year of Edward I., the borough was first sum- 
moned to send members to parliament, from which burden, 
as it was then considered, it was relieved in the ensuing" 
year. 

In 1321, Thomas, earl of Lancaster, held a council here 
with other discontented barons against Edward II. ; in its 
results it brought many of them to an untimely death, and 
Lancaster himself suff'ered by the axe at Pomfret, as much 
in revenge for Gaveston as for this rebellion. " In this 



192 THE DOCTOR. 

sort," says an old chronicler, " came the mighty Earl of 
Lancaster to his end, being the greatest peer in this realm, 
and one of the mightiest earls in Christendom : for when he be- 
gan to levy war against the king, he was possessed of five 
earldoms, Lancaster, Lincoln, Salisbury, Leicester, and Derby, 
besides other seigniories, lands, and possessions, great to his 
advancement in honour and puissance. But all this was lim- 
ited within prescription of time, which being expired both 
honour and puissances were cut off with dishonour and 
death ; for (oh miserable state !) 

" Invida fatorum series, summisque negatum 
Stare diu." 

But now touching the aforesaid Earl of Lancaster, great 
strife rose afterward among the people, whether he ought 
to be reputed for a saint, or no. Some held that he ought 
to be no less esteemed, for that he did many alms deeds in 
his lifetime, honoured men of religion, and maintained a true 
quarrel till his life's end. Also his enemies continued not 
long after, but came to evil ends. Others conceived another 
opinion of him, alleging that he favoured not his wife, but 
lived in spouse-breach, defiling a great number of damsels 
and gentlewomen. If any offended him, he slew him shortly 
after in his wrathful mood. Apostates and other evil doers 
he maintained, and would not suffer them to be punished by 
due order of law. All his doings he used to commit to one 
of his secretaries, and took no heed himself thereof ; and as 
for the manner of his death, he fled shamefully in the fight, 
and was taken and put to death against his will; yet by 
reason of certain miracles which were said to be done near 
the place both where he suff"ered and where he was buried, 
caused many to think he w^as a saint. Howbeit, at length 
by the king's commandment the church doors of the priory 
where he was buried were shut and closed, so that no man 
might be sufi'ered to come to the tomb to bring any off'erings, 
or to do any other kind of devotion to the same. " Also the 
hill where he suffered was kept by certain Gascoigners ap- 
pointed by the Lord Hugh Spenser his son, then lying at 
Pomfret, to the end that no people should come and make 
their prayers there in worship of the said earl, whom they 
took verily for a martyr." 

The next confederacy at Doncaster was more successful, 
though it led eventually to bloodier consequences. Boling- 
broke, after landing at Ravensburg, was met here by North- 
umberland, Hotspur, Westmoreland, and others, who engaged 
with him there, some of them probably not knowing how 
far his ambitious views extended, and who afterward be- 
came the victims of their own turbulent policy. The 
dragon's teeth which were then sown produced a plentiful 



THE DOCTOR. 193 

harvest threescore years afterward, when more than six-and* 
thirty thousand Enghshnien fell by each other's hands at 
Towton, between this town and York. Edward IV. be- 
headed Sir Robert Willis and Sir Ralph Grey here, whom 
he had taken in the rout of Lose-coat field ; and when he 
mustered his people here to march against Warwick and 
Clarence, whose intentions began then to be discovered, " it 
was said that never was seen in England so many goodly 
men and so well arranged in a field." Afterward he passed 
through Doncaster when he returned from exile on the way 
to his crowning victory at Barnet. 

Richard III. also passed through this place on his way to 
York, where he was crowned. In Henry VIII. 's reign it 
became the actual seat of war, and a battle would have been 
fought there, if the Don had not, by its sudden rising, twice 
prevented Aske and his army of insurgents from attacking the 
Duke of Norfolk, with so superior a force that success would 
have been almost certain, and the triumph of the popish party 
a probable result. Here Norfolk, profiting by that delay, 
treated with the insurgents, and finally, by offering them a 
free pardon, and engaging that a free parliament should be 
held in the North, induced them to disperse. 

In 1538, John Grigge, the mayor, lost a thumb in an affray 
at Marshgate, and next year the Prior of Doncaster was 
hanged for treason. In 1551 the town was visited by the 
plague : in that of 1582, 908 persons died here. 

The next noticeable circumstance in the annals of Don- 
caster, is that James I. lodged there, at the sign of the Sun 
and Bear, on his way from Scotland to take possession of 
the crown of England. 

The maypole in the market-place was taken down in 1634, 
and the market cross erected there in its place. But the 
removal of the maypole seems to have been no proof of any 
improved state of morals in the town ; for Barnabee, the 
illustrious potator, saw there the most unbecoming sight 
that he met with in all his travels. On his second visit the 
frail Levite was dead ; and I will not pick out a name from 
the succession of vicars which might suit the time of the 
poem, because though Doncaster was the scene it does not 
follow that the vicar was the actor ; and whoever he may 
have been, his name can be no object of legitimate curiosity, 
though Barnabee's justly was, till it was with so much in- 
genuity determined by Mr. Haslewood. 

When the army which had been raised against the Scots 
was disbanded, Charles I. dined there at the house of Lady 
Carlingford, and a pear tree which he is said to have planted 
is now standing there in Mr. Maw's garden. Charles was 
there again in 1644, and attended service in the church. 
And from a house in the butter market it was that Morris 
with two comparjons attempted to carry off the parlia- 



194 THE DOCTOR. 

mentary commander Rainsboroiigh at noonday, and failing 
in the attempt, killed him upon the spot. 

A church library was founded her3 by the contributions 
of the clergy and gentry of the surrounding country in 
1726. A chamber over the church porch was appropriated 
for the books, with the archbishop's license ; and there was 
one curate of this town whose love of reading was so great, 
that he not onlv passed his days in this library, but had a 
bed fixed there, and spent his nigh s '-re also. 

In 1731 all the streets were new paved, and the signpost 
taken down ; and in 1739, Daniel Dove, in remembrance of 
whom these voiumes are com.posed, came to reside in Don- 
caster. 



CHAPTER XLV. P. I. 

CONCERNING THE WORTHIES, OR GOOD MEN, WHO WERE NATIVES 
OP DONCASTER OR OTHERWISE CONNECTED WITH THAT TOWN. 

Yir bonus est quis ? 

Tekenck. 

Let good old Fuller answer the well-known question which 
is conveyed in the motto to this chapter. " And here," he 
says, " be it remembered, that the same epithet in several 
places accepts sundry interpretations. He is called a good 
man in common discourse, who is not dignified with gen- 
tility : a good man upon the exchange^ who hath a responsi- 
ble estate ; a good man in a camp, M^ho is a tall man of his 
arms ; a good man in the church, who is pious and devout in 
his conversation. Thus, whatever is fixed therein in other 
relations, that person is a good man in history, whose char- 
acter affords such matter as may please the palate of an in- 
genuous reader." 

Two other significations may be added which Fuller has 
not pretermitted, because he could not include them, they 
being relatively to him, of posthumous birth. A good man 
upon state trials, or in certain committees which it might not 
be discreet to designate, is one who will give his verdict with- 
out any regard to his oath in the first case or to the evidence 
in both. And in the language of the pugilists it signifies one 
who can bear a great deal of beating : Hal Pierce, the Game 
Chicken and unrivalled glory of the ring, pronounced this eu- 
logium upon Mr. Gully, the present honourable member for 
Pontefract, when he was asked for a candid opinion of his 
professional merits : " Sir, he was the very best man as ever 
I had." 



THE DOCTOR. 195 

A.mong the good men, in Fuller's acceptation of the term, 
who have been in any way connected with Doncaster, the 
first in renown as well as in point of time, is Robin Hood. 
Many men talk of him who never shot in his bow ; but many 
think of him when they drink at his well, which is at Skel- 
broke by the wayside, about six miles from Doncaster on the 
York road. There is a small inn near with Robin Hood for 
its sign ; this country has produced no other hero whose pop- 
ularity has endured so long. The Duke of Marlborough, the 
Duke of Cumberland, and the Marquis of Granby have flour- 
ished upon signposts, and have faded there ; so have their 
compeers Prince Eugene and Prince Ferdinand. Rodney 
and Nelson are fading ; and the time is not far distant when 
Wellington also will have had his day. But while England 
shall be England, Robin Hood will be a popular name. 

Near Robin Hood's well, and nearer to Doncaster, the Her- 
mit of Hampole resided, at the place from which he was so 
called, " where living he was honoured, and dead was buried 
and sainted." Richard Role, however, for that was his name, 
was no otherwise sainted than by common opinion in those 
parts. He died in 1349, and is the oldest of our known poets. 
His writings, both in verse and prose, which are of consid- 
erable extent, ought to be published at the expense of some na- 
tional institution. 

In the next generation, John Marse, who was born in a 
neighbouring village of that name, flourished in the Carmel- 
ite Convent at Doncaster, and obtained great celebrity in his 
time for writing against — a far greater than himself — John 
Wickliffe. 

It is believed that Sir Martin Frobisher was born at Don- 
caster, and that his father was mayor of that place. " I note 
this the rather," says Fuller, " because learned Mr. Carpenter, 
in his geography, recounts him among the famous men of 
Devonshire ; but why should Devonshire, which hath a flock 
of worthies of her own, take a lamb from another country ?" 
This brave seaman, when he left his property to a kinsman 
who was very likely to dissipate it, said, " It was gotten at sea, 
and would never thrive long at land." 

Lord Molesworth, having purchased the estate at Edling- 
ton, four miles from Doncaster, formerly the property of Sir 
Edward Stanhope, resided there occasionally in the old man- 
sion, during the latter part of his life. His Account of Den- 
mark, is a book which may always be read with profit. The 
Danish ambassador complained of it to King William, and 
hinted that if one of his Danish majesty's subjects had taken 
such liberties with the King of England, his master would, 
upon complaint, have taken off the author's head. " That I 
cannot do," replied William ; " but if you please, I will tell him 
what you say, and he shall put it into the next edition of his 
book." 
9* 



196 THE DOCTOR. 

Other remarkable persons who were connected with Don- 
caster, and were contemporaries with Dr. Dove, will be no- 
ticed in due time. Here I shall only mention two who have 
distin^iished themselves since his days (alas !) and since 1 
took my leave of a place endeared to me by so many recollec- 
tions. Mr. Bingley, well known for his popular works upon 
natural history, and Mr. Henry Lister Maw, the adven- 
turous naval officer who was the first Englishman that ever 
came down the great river Amazon, are both natives of this 
town. I know not whether the Doncaster Maws are of Hi- 
bernian descent ; but the name of M'Coghlan is in Ireland 
beautified and abbreviated into Maw ; the M'Coglan, or head 
of the family was called the Maw ; and a district of King's 
county was known, within the memory of persons now liv- 
ing, by the appellation of the Maws county. 

For myself, I am behind a veil which is not to be with- 
drawn : nevertheless, I may say, without consideration of 
myself, that in Doncaster both because of the principal scene 
and of the subject of this work — 

" HONOS ERIT HUlC QUOQUE TOMO." 



INTERCHAPTER VI. 

CONTINGENT CAUSES — PERSONAL CONSmERATIONS INDUCED BY RE- 
FLECTING ON THEM THE AUTHOR TREMBLES FOR THE PAST. 

Vereis que no hay lazada desasida 

De nudo y de pendencia soberana ; 
Ni a poder trastornar la orden del cielo 

Las fuerzas llegan, ni el saber del suelo. 

Balbuena. 

" There is no action of man in this life," says Thomas of 
Malmesbury, "which is not the beginning of so long a chain 
of consequences, as that no human providence is high 
enough to give us a prospect to the end." The chain of 
causes however is as long as the chain of consequences 
— peradventure longer; and when I think of the causes 
which have combined to procreate this book, and the conse- 
quences which of necessity it must produce, I am lost in ad- 
miration. 

How many accidents might for ever have impossibilitated 
the existence of this incomparable work ! If, for instance, I, 
the unknown, had been born in any other part of the world 
than in the British dominions ; or in any other age than one 
so near the time in which the venerable subject of these me< 



THE DOCTOR. 197 

raoirs flourished ; or in any other place than where these 
localities could have been learned, and all these personalities 
were remembered; or if I had not counted it among my 
felicities like the philosopher of old, and the Polish Jews of 
this da}^ (who thank God for it in their ritual,) to have been 
born a male instead of a female ; or if I had been born too 
poor to obtain the blessings of education, or too rich to pro- 
fit by them : or if I had not been born at all. If indeed in 
the course of six thousand years which have elapsed since 
the present race of intellectual inhabitants were placed upon 
this terraqueous globe, any chance had broken off one mar- 
riage among my innumerable married progenitors, or thwarted 
the courtship of those my equally innumerable ancestors who 
lived before that ceremony was instituted, or in countries 
where it was not known — where, or how would my immor- 
tal part have existed at this time, or in what shape would 
these bodily elements have been compounded with which it 
is invested ? A single miscarriage among my millions of 
grandmothers might have cut off the entail of my mortal 
being ! 

Quid non evertit priinordia frivola vitse ? 

Nee mirum, vita est Integra pene nihil. 
Nunc perit, ah ! tenui pereuntis odore lucemae, 

Et fumum hunc fumus fortior ille fugat. 
Totum aquilis Caesar rapidis circumvolet orbem, 

Collegamque sibi vix ferat esse Jovem. 
Quantula res quantos potuisset inepta triumphos, 

Et magnum nasci vel prohibere Deum ! 
Exhaeredasset moriente lucernula flamma 

Tot dominis mundum numinibusque novis. 
Tu quoque tantilU, juvenis Pellsee, perisses, 

(Quam gratus terris ille fuisset odor !) 
Tu tantiim unius qui pauper regulus orbis, 

Et prope privatus visus es esse tibi. 
Nee tu tantum, idem potuisset tollere easus 

Teque Jovis fill, Bucephalumque tuum : 
Dormitorque urbem mal^ delevisset agaso 

Bucephalam ^ vestris, Indica Fata, libris.* 

The snuff of a candle — a fall— a fright— nay, even a fit of 
anger ! Such things are happening daily — yea, hourly upon 
this peopled earth. One such mishap among so many mil- 
lions of cases, millions ten million times told, centillions 
multiplied beyond the vocabulary of numeration, and ascend- 
ing to ^anfiaKoam ; which word having been coined by a' 
certain Alexis, (perhaps no otherwise remembered,) and lat- 
inized arenaginta by Erasmus, is now Anglicised sandillions 
by me — one such among them all ! — I tremble to think of 
it! 

Again. How often has it depended upon political events ♦ 
If the Moors had defeated Charles Martel ; if William nv 

* Cowley. 



198 THE DOCTOR. 

stead of Harold had fallen in the battle of Hastings ; if bloody 
Queen Mary had left a child ; or if blessed Queen Mary had 
not married the Prince of Orange I In the first case the 
English might now have been Mussulmen; in the second 
they would have continued to use the Saxon tongue, and in 
either of these cases the ego could not have existed ; for if 
Arabian blood were put in, or Norman taken out, the whole 
chain of succession would have been altered. The two 
latter cases perhaps might not have affected the bodily ex- 
istence of the ego ; but the first might have entailed upon 
him the curse of popery, and the second, if it had not subjected 
him to the same curse, would have made him the subject of 
a despotic government. In neither case could he have been 
capable of excogitating lucubrations, such as this high his- 
tory contains : for either of these misfortunes would have 
emasculated his mind, unipsefying and unegofying the ipsis- 
simus ego. 

Another chance must be mentioned. One of my ances- 
tors was, as the phrase is, out in a certain rebellion. His 
heart led him into the field and his heels got him out of it. 
Had he been less nimble — or had he been taken and hanged, 
and hanged he would have been if taken — there would have 
been no ego at this day, no history of Dr. Daniel Dove. The 
doctor would have been like the heroes who lived before 
Agamemnon, and his immortalizer would never have Uved 
at all. 



CHAPTER XLVI. P. I. 

DANIEL dove's ARRIVAL AT DONCASTER — THE ORGAN IN ST. 

George's church — the pulpit — mrs. neale's benefaction. 

Non nulla Musis pagina gratior 
Quam quae sevens ludicra jungere 
Novit, fatigatamque nugis 
Utilibus recreare mentem. 

Dr. Johnson. 

It was in the mayoralty of Thomas Pheasant, (as has al- 
ready been said,) and in the year of our Lord 1739, that Dan- 
iel Dove the younger, having then entered upon his seven- 
teenth year, first entered the town of Doncaster, and vi^as 
there delivered by his excellent father to the care of Peter 
Hopkins. They loved each other so dearly, that this, vv^hich 
was the first day of their separation, was to both the unhap- 
piest of their lives. 

The great frost commenced in the winter of that year ; and 



THE DOCTOR. 199 

with the many longing, lingering thoughts which Daniel cast 
towards his home, a wish was mingled that he could see the 
frozen waterfall in Weathercote Cave. 

It was a remarkable era in Doncaster also, because the 
organ was that year erected, at the cost of five hundred guin- 
eas, raised by voluntary subscription among the parish- 
ioners. Harris and Byfield were the builders, and it is still 
esteemed one of the best in the kingdom. When it was 
opened, the then curate, Mr. Fawkes, preached a sermon for 
the occasion, in which, after having rhetorized in praise of 
sacred music, and touched upon the cornet, flute, harp, sack- 
but, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of instruments, he turned 
to the organ and apostrophized it thus : " But oh what— 
oh what — what shall I call thee by ?— thou divine box of 
sounds !" 

That right old worthy Francis Quarles of quaint memory 
— and the more to be remembered for his quaintness — knew 
how to improve an organ somewhat better than Mr. Fawkes 
His poem upon one is the first in his divine fancies, and 
whether he would have it ranked among epigrams, medita- 
tions, or observations, perhaps he could not himself tell. 
The reader may class it as he pleases. 

" Observe this organ : mark but how it goes ! 
'Tis not the hand alone of him that blows 
The unseen be] lows, nor the hand that plays 
Upon the apparent note-dividing keys, 
That makes these well-composed airs appear 
Before the high tribunal of thine ear. 
They both concur ; each acts his several part ; 
The one gives it breath, the other lends it art. 
Man is this organ ; to whose every action 
Heaven gives a breath, (a breath without coaction,) 
"Without which blast we cannot act at all ; 
Without which breath the universe must fall 
To the first nothing it was made of — seeing 
In Him we live, we move, we have our being. 
Thus filled with His diviner breath, and back'd 
With His first power, we touch the keys and act : 
He blows the bellows : as we thrive in skill, 
Our actions prove, like music, good or iU." 

The question whether instrumental music may lawfully be 
introduced into the worship of God in the churches of the 
New Testament, has been considered by Cotton Mather, and 
answered to his own satisfaction and that of his contempo- 
rary countrymen and their fellow Puritans, in his " Historical 
Remarks upon the Discipline practisedin the Churches of New- 
England." " The instrumental music used in the old church 
of Israel," he says, "was an institution of God; it was the 
commandment of the Lord by the prophets; and the instru- 
ments are called God's instruments, and instruments of the 
Lord. Now there is not one word of institution in the New 



200 THE DOCTOR. 

Testament for instrumental music in the worship of God. 
And because the holy God rejects all he does not command 
in his worship, he now therefore in effect says to us, I will 
not hear the melody of thy organs. But on the other hand the 
rule given doth abundantly intimate that no voice is now 
heard in the church but what is significant, and edifying by 
signification ; which the voice of instruments is not." 

Worse logic than this and weaker reasoning no one would 
wish to meet with in the controversial writings of a writer 
from whose opinions he differs most widely. The remarks 
form part of that extraordinary and highly interesting work 
the Magnalia Christi Americana. Cotton Mather is such an 
author as Fuller would have been if the old English worthy, 
instead of having been from a child trained up in the way he 
should go, had been Calvinisticated till the milk of human 
kindness with which his heart was always ready to overflov^ 
had turned sour. 

" Though instrumental music," he proceeds to say, " were 
admitted and appointed in the worship of God under the Old 
Testament, yet we do not find it practised in the synagogue 
of the Jews, but only in the Temple. It thence appears to 
have been a part of the ceremonial pedagogy which is now 
abolished ; nor can any say it was a part of moral worship. 
And whereas the common usage now hath confined instru- 
mental music to cathedrals, it seems therein too much to 
Judaize — which to do is a part of the antichristian apostacy 
— as well as to paganize. If we admit instrumental music 
in the worship of God, how can we resist the imposition of 
all the instruments used among the ancient Jews ? Yea, 
dancing as well as playing, and several other Judaic actions V 

During the short but active reign of the Puritans in Eng- 
land, they acted upon this preposterous opinion, and sold the 
church organs, without being scrupulous concerning the uses 
to which they might be applied. A writer of that age, speak- 
ing of the prevalence of drunkenness, as a national vice, says, 
" that nothing may be wanting to the height of luxury and 
impiety of this abomination they have translated the organs 
out of the churches to set them up in taverns, chanting their 
dithyrambics and bestial bacchanalias to the tune of those in- 
struments which were wont to assist them in the celebration 
of God's praises and regulate the voices of the worst singers in 
the world — which are the Enghsh in their churches at pres- 
ent." 

It cannot be supposed that the organs which were thus 
disposed of were instruments of any great cost or value. 
An old pair of organs, (for that was the customary mode of 
expression, meaning a set — and in like manner a pair of 
cards, for a pack,) an old pair of this kind belonging to 
Lambeth church was sold in 1565 for II. \Qs. Church organs, 



THE DOCTOR. 201 

therefore, even if they had not been at a revolutionary price, 
would be within the purchase of an ordinary vintner. " In 
country parish churches," says Mr. Denne the antiquary, 
" even where the district was small, there was often a choir 
of singers, for whom forms, desks, and books were provided ; 
and they probably most of them had benefactors who sup- 
plied them with a pair of organs that might more properly 
have been termed a box of whistles. To the best of my 
recollection there were in the chapels of some of the col- 
leges in Cambridge very, very indifferent instruments. That 
of the chapel belonging to our old house was removed before 
I was admitted." 

The use of the organ has occasioned a great commotion, 
if not a schism, among the Methodists of late. Yet our holy 
Herbert could call church music the " sweetest of sweets ;" 
and describe himself when listening to it as disengaged from 
the body, and "rising and falling with its wings." 

Harris, the chief builder of the Doncaster organ, was a 
contemporary and rival of Father Smith, famous among or- 
ganists. Each built one for the Temple church, and Father 
Smith's had most votes in its favour. The peculiarity of the 
Doncaster organ, which was Harris's masterpiece, is, its 
having, in the great organ, two trumpets and a clarion, 
throughout the whole compass ; and these stops are so excel- 
lent, that a celebrated musician said every pipe in them was 
worth its weight in silver. 

Our doctor dated from that year, in his own recollections, 
as the great era of his life. It served also for many of the 
Doncastrians, as a date to which they carried back their 
computations, till the generation which remembered the 
erecting of the organ was extinct. 

This was the age of church improvement in Doncaster — 
meaning here by church, the material structure. Just thirty 
years before, the church had been beautified and the ceiling 
painted, too probably to the disfigurement of works of a 
better architectural age. In 1721, the old peal of five bells 
was replaced with eight new ones, of new metal, heretofore 
spoken of. In 1723 the church floor and churchyard, which 
had both been unlevelled by death's levelling course, were 
levelled anew, and new rails were placed to the altar. Two 
years later the corporation gave the new clock, and it was 
fixed to strike on the watch bell — that clock which numbered 
the hours of Daniel Dove's life from the age of seventeen till 
that of seventy. In 1736 the west gallery was put up, and 
in 1741, ten years after the organ, a new pulpit, but not in 
the old style ; for pulpits, which are among the finest works 
of art in Brabant and Flanders, had degenerated in England, 
and in other Protestant countries. 

This probably was owing, in our own country, as much to 



202 THE DOCTOR. 

the prevalence of Puritanism, as to the general depravation 
of taste. It was for their beauty or their splendour that the 
early Quakers inveighed with such vehemence against pul- 
pits, " many of which places," saith George Keith in his 
quaking days, " as we see in England and many other coun- 
tries, have a great deal of superfluity, and vain and superflu- 
ous labour and pains of carving, painting, and varnishing upon 
them, together with your cloth and velvet cushion in many 
places ; because of which, and not for the height of them 
above the ground, we call them chief places. But as for a 
commodious place above the ground whereon to stand when 
one doth speak in an assembly, it was never condemned by 
our friends, who also have places whereupon to stand, when 
to minister, as they had under the law." 

In 1743 a marble communion table was placed in the 
church, and (passing forward more rapidly than the regular 
march of this narration, in order to present these ecclesias- 
tical matters without interruption) a set of chimes were fixed 
in 1754 — merry be the memory of those by whom this good 
work was effected ! The north and south galleries were re- 
built in 1765; and in 1767 the church was whitewashed, a 
new reading desk put up, the pulpit removed to what was 
deemed a more convenient station, and Mrs. Neale gave a 
velvet embroidered cover and cushion for it — for which her 
name is enrolled among the benefactors of St. George's 
Church. 

That velvet which, when I remember it, had lost the bloom 
of its complexion, will hardly have been preserved till now 
even by the dier's renovating aid : and its embroidery has 
long since passed through the goldsmith's crucible. Sic tran^ 
sit excites a more melancholy feeling in me when a recollec- 
tion like this arises in my mind, than even the " forlorn Hie 
jacef of a neglected tombstone. Indeed such is the soften 
ing effect of time upon those who have not been rendered 
obdurate and insensible by the world and the world's law, 
that I do not now call to mind without some emotion even 
that pulpit, to which I certainly bore no good will in early 
life, when it was my fortune to hear from it so many somnif- 
erous discourses ; and to bear away from it, upon pain of 
displeasure in those whose displeasure to me was painful, so 
many texts, chapter and verse, few or none of which had 
been improved to my advantage. " Public sermons" — (hear ! 
hear ! for Martin Luther speaketh !) — " pubhc sermons do 
very little edify children, who observe and learn but little 
thereby. It is more needful that they be taught and well 
instructed with diligence in schools ; and at home that they 
be orderly heard and examined in what they have learned. 
This way profiteth much ; it is, indeed, very wearisome, but 
it is very necessary." May I not then confess that no turn 



THE DOCTOR. 203 

of expression however felicitous — no collocation of words 
however emphatic and beautiful — no other sentences what- 
soever, although rounded, or pointed for effect with the mos"- 
consummate skill, have ever given me so much delight, as 
those dear phrases which are employed in winding up a ser- 
mon, when it is brought to its long wished for close. 

It is not always, nor necessarily thus ; nor ever would be 
so if these things were ordered as they might and ought to 
be. Hugh Latimer, Bishop Taylor, Robert South, John 
Wesley, Robert Hall, Bishop Jebb, Bishop H^eber, Christo- 
pher Benson, your hearers felt no such tedium ! when you 
reached that period it was to them like the cessation of a 
strain of music, which, while it lasted, had rendered them in- 
sensible to the lapse of time. 

*' I would not," said Luther, "have preachers torment their 
hearers, and detain them with long and tedious preaching." 



CHAPTER XLVH. P. I. 

DONCASTRIANA GUY's DEATH SEARCH FOR HIS TOMBSTONE IN 

INGLETON CHURCHYARD. 

Go to the dull churchyard, and see 
Those hillocks of mortaUty, 
Where proudest man is only found 
By a small hillock on the ground. 

Tixall Poetry. 

The first years of Daniel's abode in Doncaster were dis- 
tinguished by many events of local memorability. The old 
Friar's Bridge was taken down, and a new one with one 
large arch built in its stead. Turnpikes were erected on the 
roads to Saltsbrook and to Tadcaster; and in 1742 Lord 
Semple's regiment of Highlanders marched through the 
town, being the first soldiers without breeches who had ever 
been seen there since breeches were in use. In 1746, the 
Mansionhouse was begun, next door to Peter Hopkins's, 
and by no means to his comfort while the work was going 
on, nor indeed after it was completed, its effect upon his 
chimneys having heretofore been noticed. The building 
was interrupted by the rebellion. An army of six thousand 
English and Hessians was then encamped upon Wheatley 
Hills ; and a Hessian general dying there, was buried in St. 
George's Church, from whence his leaden coffin was stolen 
by the graved igger. 

Daniel had then completed his twenty-second year. Every 



204 THE DOCTOR. 

summer he paid a month's visit to his parents ; and those 
were happy days, not the less so to all parties because his 
second home had become almost as dear to him as his first. 
Guy did not live to see the progress of his pupil ; he died a 
few months after the lad had been placed at Doncaster, and 
the delight of Daniel's first return was overclouded by this 
loss. It was a severe one to the elder Daniel, who lost in 
the schoolmaster his only intellectual companion. 

I have sought in vain for Richard Guy's tombstone in In- 
gleton churchyard. That there is one there can hardly, I 
think, be doubted ; for if he left no relations who regarded 
him, nor perhaps effects enough of his own to defray this last 
posthumous and not necessary expense ; and if Thomas 
Gent of York, who published the old poem of Flodden Field 
from his transcript, after his death, thought he required no 
other monument ; Daniel was not likely to omit this last 
tribute of respect and affection to his friend. But the church- 
yard, which, when his mortal remains were deposited there, 
accorded well with its romantic site, on a little eminence 
above the roaring torrent, and with the then retired character 
of the village, and with the solemn use to which it was 
consecrated, is now a thickly peopled burial ground. Since 
their time manufactures have been established in Ingleton, 
and though eventually they proved unsuccessful, and were 
consequently abandoned, yet they continued long enough in 
work largely to increase the population of the churchyard. 
Amid so many tombs the stone which marked poor Guy's 
resting-place might escape even a more diligent search than 
mine. Nearly a century has elapsed since it was set up : 
in the course of that time its inscription not having been 
retouched, must have become illegible to all but an anti- 
quary's poring and practised eyes ; and perhaps to them also 
unless aided by his tracing tact, and by the conjectural sup- 
ply of connecting words, syllables, or letters : indeed the 
stone itself has probably become half interred, as the earth 
around it has been disturbed and raised. Time corrodes our 
epitaphs, and buries our very tombstones. 

Returning pensively from my unsuccessful search in the 
churchyard to the little inn at Ingleton, I found there upon a 
sampler, worked in 1824 by Elizabeth Brown, aged 9, and 
framed as an ornament for the room which I occupied, some 
lines in as moral a strain of verse as any which I had that 
day perused among the tombs. And I transcribed them for 
preservation, thinking it not improbable that they had been 
originally composed by Richard Guy, for the use of his fe- 
male scholars, and handed down for a like purpose, from one 
generation to another. This may be only a fond imagina- 
tion, and perhaps it might not have occurred to me at an- 
other time ; but many compositions have been ascribed in 
modern as well as ancient times, and indeed daily are so, to 



THE DOCTOE. 205 

more celebrated persons, upon less likely grounds. These 
are the verses : — 

" Jesus, permit thy gracious name to stand 
As the first effort of an infant's hand ; 
And as her fingers on the sampler move, 
Engage her tender heart to seek thy love ; 
With thy dear children may she have a part. 
And write thy name thyself upon her heart." 



CHAPTER XLVIII. P. I. 

A father's misgivings concerning his son's destination- 
peter Hopkins's generosity — daniel is sent abroad to 
graduate in medicine. 

Heaven is the magazine wherein He puts 
Both good and evil ; Prayer's the key that shuts 
And opens this great treasure • 'tis a key 
Whose wards are Faith, and Hope, and Charity. 
Wouldst thou present a judgment due to sin ? 
Turn but the key and thou mayst lock it in. 
Or wouldst thou have a blessing fall upon thee ? 
Open the door," and it will shower on thee ! 

Quarles. 

The elder Daniel saw in the marked improvement of his 
son at every yearly visit more and more cause to be satisfied 
with himself for having given him such a destination, and 
to thank Providence that the youth was placed with a master 
whose kindness and religious care of him might truly be 
called fatherly. There was but one consideration which 
sometimes interfered with that satisfaction, and brought with 
it a sense of uneasiness. The Doves from time immemorial 
had belonged to the soil as fixedly as the soil had belonged to 
them. Generation after generation they had moved in the same 
contracted sphere, their wants and wishes being circumscribed 
alike within the'r own few hereditary acres. Pride, under 
whatever form it may show itself, is of the devil ; and though 
family pride may not be its most odious manifestation, even 
that child bears a sufficiently ugly likeness of its father. 
But family feeling is a very different thing, and may exist as 
strongly in humble as in high life. Naboth was as much 
attached to the vineyard, the inheritance of his fathers, as 
Ahab could be to the throne which had been the prize, and 
the reward, or punishment, of his father Omri's ambition. 

This feeling sometimes induced a doubt in Daniel whether 
affection for his son had not made him overlook his duty to 
his forefathers; whether the fixtures of the land are not 



206 THE DOCTOR. 

happier and less in the way of evil than the movables 
whether he had done right in removing the lad from that 
station of life in which he was born, in which it had pleased 
God to place him ; divorcing him as it were from his pater- 
nal soil, and cutting off the entail of that sure independence, 
that safe contentment, which his ancestors had obtained and 
preserved for hin?. and transmitted to his care to be in like 
manner by him preserved and handed down. The latent 
poetry which there was in the old man's heart made him 
sometimes feel as if the fields and the brook, and the hearth 
and the graves, reproached him for having done this ! But 
then he took shelter in the reflection that he had consulted 
the boy's true welfare, by giving him opportunities of storing 
and enlarging his mind ; that he had placed him in the way 
of intellectual advancement, where he might improve the 
talents which were committed to his charge, both for his 
own benefit and for that of his fellow-creatures. Certain he 
was that whether he had acted wisely or not, he had meant 
well. He was conscious that his determination had not 
been made without much and anxious deliberation, nor with- 
out much and earnest prayer; hitherto, he saw, that the 
blessing which he prayed for had followed it, and he endeav- 
oured to make his heart rest in thankful and pious hope 
that that blessing would be continued. " Wouldst thou 
know," says Quaries, " the lawfulness of the action which 
thou desirest to undertake, let thy devotion recommend it 
to divine blessing. If it be lawful thou shalt perceive thy 
heart encouraged by thy prayer ; if unlawful thou shalt find 
thy prayer discouraged by thy heart. That action is not 
warrantable which either blushes to beg a blessing, or, hav- 
ing succeeded, dares not present a thanksgiving." Daniel 
might safely put his conduct to this test ; and to this test in 
fact his own healthy and uncorrupted sense of religion led 
him, though probably he had never read these golden words 
of Quaries the Emblemist. 

It was therefore with no ordinary delight that our good 
Daniel received a letter from his son, asking permission to go 
to Leyden, in conformity with his master's wishes, and there 
prosecute his studies long enough to graduate as a doctor 
in medicine. Mr. Hopkins, he said, would generously take 
upon himself the whole expense, having adopted him as his 
successor, and almost as a son ; for as such he was treated 
in all respects, both by him and by his mistress, who was 
one of the best of women. And, indeed, it appeared that 
Mr. Hopkins had long entertained this intention, by the 
care which he had taken to make him keep up and improve 
the knowledge of Latin which he had acquired under Mr. 
Guy. 

The father's consent, as might be supposed, was thank- 
fully given; and accordingly Daniel Dove in the twenty- 



THE DOCTOR. 20'/ 

third year of his age embarked from Kingston upon Hull 
for Rotterdam, well provided by the care and kindness of 
his benevolent master with letters of introduction and of 
credit ; and still better provided with those religious princi- 
ples which, though they cannot ensure prosperity in this 
world, ensure to us things of infinitely greater moment — 
good conduct, peace of mind, and the everlasting reward of 
the righteous. 



CHAPTER XLIX. P. I. 

CONCERNING THE INTEREST WHICH DANIEL THE ELDER TOOK IN 
THE DUTCH WAR, AND MORE ESPECIALLY IN THE SIEGE AND 
PROVIDENTIAL DELIVERY OF LEYDEN. 

Glory to thee in thine omnipotence, 

O Lord who art our shield and our defence, 

And dost dispense, 

As seemeth best to thine unerring will, 

(Which passeth mortal sense,) 

The lot of victory still ; 

Edging sometimes with might the sword unjust ; 

And bowing to the dust, 

The rightful cause, that so such seeming ill 

May thine appointed purposes fulfil ; 

Sometimes, as in this late auspicious hour 

For which our hymns we raise. 

Making the wicked feel thy present power ; 

Glory to thee and praise. 

Almighty God, by whom our strength was given ! 

Glory to thee, O Lord of earth and heaven ! 

SODTHEY. 

There were two portions of history with which the elder 
Daniel was better acquainted than most men — that of Ed 
ward the Third's reign, and that of the wars in the Nether- 
lands down to the year 1608. Upon both subjects he was 
homo nnius libri ; such a man is proverbially formidable at 
his own weapon ; and the book with which Johnson immor- 
talized Osborne the bookseller, by knocking him down with 
it, was not a more formidable folio than either of those from 
which Daniel derived this knowledge. 

Now of all the events in the wars of the Low Countries, 
there was none which had so strongly aflfected his imagina- 
tion as the siege of Leyden. The patient fortitude of the 
besieged, and their deliverance, less by the exertions of man, 
(though no human exertions were omitted,) than by the spe- 
cial mercy of Him whom the elements obey, and in whom 
they had put their trust, were in the strong and pious mind 



208 THE DOCTOR. 

of Daniel, things of more touching interest than the tragedy 
of Haerlem, or the wonders of military science and of 
courage displayed at the siege of Antwerp. Who, indeed, 
could forget the fierce answer of the Leydeners when they 
were, for the last time, summoned to surrender, that the 
men of Leyden would never surrender while they had one 
arm left to eat, and another to fight \vith ! And the not less 
terrible reply of the burgemeester Pieter Adriaaiizoon Van- 
der Werf, to some of the townsmen when they represented 
to him the extremity of famine to which they were reduced : 
" I have sworn to defend this city," he made answer, " and 
by God's help 1 mean to keep that oath ! but if my death can 
help ye, men, here is my body ! cut it in pieces, and share it 
among ye as far as it w^ill go." And who, without partaking 
in the hopes and fears of the contest, almost as if it were 
still at issue, can peruse the details of that amphibious battle 
(if such an expression may be allowed) upon the inundated 
country, when, in the extremity of their distress, and at a time 
when the Spaniards said that it was as impossible for the 
Hollanders to save Leyden from their power, as it was for 
them to pluck the stars from heaven, " a great south wind, 
which they might truly say came from the grace of God," 
set in with such a spring tide, that in the course of eight-and- 
forty hours, the inundation rose half a foot, thus rendering 
the fields just passable for the flat bottomed boats which had 
been provided for that service ! A naval battle, among the 
trees; where the besieged, though it was fought within two 
miles of their walls, could see nothing because of the fo- 
liage ; and amid such a labyrinth of dikes, ditches, rivers, 
and fortifications, that w^hen the besiegers retired from their 
palisades and sconces, the conquerors w^ere not aware of 
their own success, nor the besieged of their deliverance ! 

" In this delivery," says the historian, " and in every par- 
ticular of the enterprise, doubtless all must be attributed to 
the mere providence of God, neither can man challenge any 
glory therein ; for without a miracle all the endeavours of 
the Protestants had been as wind. But God, who is always 
good, would not give way to the cruelties wherewith the 
Spaniards threatened this town, with all the insolences 
whereof they make profession in the taking of towns (al- 
though they be by composition) without any respect of 
humanity or honesty. And there is not any man but will 
confess with me, if he be not some atheist or epicure, (who 
maintains that all things come by chance,) that this delivery 
is a work which belongs only unto God. For if the Span- 
iards had battered the town but with four cannons only, they 
had carried it, the people being so weakened with famine, as 
they could not endure any longer : besides a part of them 
were ill affected, and very many of their best men were 
dead of the plague. And for another testimony that it was 



THE DOCTOR. 209 

God only who wrought, the town was no sooner delivered, 
but the wind, which was southwest, and had driven the 
water out of the sea into the country, turned to northeast, 
and did drive it back again into the sea, as if the southwest 
wind had blown those three days only to that effect; where- 
fore they might well say that both the winds and the sea had 
fought for the town of Leyden. And as for the resolution 
of the States of Holland to drown the country, and to do 
that which they and their prince, together with all the com- 
manders, captains, and soldiers of the army showed in this 
seacourse, together with the constancy and resolution of the 
besieged to defend themselves, notwithstanding so many 
miseries which they suffered, and so many promises and 
threats which were made unto them, all in like sort pro- 
ceeded from a divine instinct." 

In the spirit of thoughtful feeling that this passage breathes, 
was the whole history of that tremendous struggle perused 
by the elder Daniel; and Daniel the son was so deeply im- 
bued with the same feeling, that if he had lived till the time 
of the Peninsular war, he would have looked upon the con- 
dition to which Spain was reduced, as a consequence of its 
former tyranny, and as an awful proof how surely, soon or 
late, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. 

Oh that all history were regarded in thife spirit ! " Even 
such as are in faith most strong, of zeal most ardent, should 
not," says one of the best and wisest of theologians, '' much 
mispend' their time in comparing the degenerate fictions, or 
historical relations of times ancient or modern, with the ever- 
lasting truth. For though this method could not add much 
increase either to their faith or zeal, yet would it doubtless 
much avail for working placid and mild affections. The very 
penmen of Sacred Writ themselves were taught patience, 
and instructed in the ways of God's providence, by their ex- 
perience of such events as the course of time is never barren 
of; not always related by canonical authors, nor immedi- 
ately testified by the Spirit ; but ofttimes believed upon a 
moral certainty, or such a resolution of circumstances con- 
current into the first cause or disposer of all affairs, as we 
might make of modern accidents, were we otherwise par- 
takers of the Spirit, or would we mind heavenly matters as 
much as earthly." 



210 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER L. P. I. 

VOYAGE TO ROTTERDAM AND LEYDEN THE AUTHOR CANNOT 

TARRY TO DESCRIBE THAT CITY — WHAT HAPPENED THERE TO 
DANIEL DOVE. 

He took great content, exceeding delight in that his voyage. As who 
doth not that shall attempt the like ? For peregrination charms our senses 
with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy 
that never travelled, a kind of prisoner, and pity his case that from his 
cradle to his old age he beholds the same still ; still, still, the SEime, the 
same ! — Burton. 

" Why did Dan remain in ships V says Deborah the pro- 
phetess, in that noble song, which, if it had been composed 
in Greek instead of Hebrew, would have made Pindar hide 
his diminished head, or taught him a loftier strain than even 
he has reached in his eagle flights. " Why did Dan remain 
in ships V said the prophetess. Our Daniel, during his rough 
passage from the Humber to the Maese, thought that nothing 
should make him do so. Yet when all danger real or ima- 
ginary was over, upon that deep 

Where Proteus' herds and Neptune's ores do keep. 
Where all is ploughed, yet still the pasture's green. 
The ways are found, and yet no paths are seen ;* 

when all the discomforts and positive sufferings of the voy- 
age were at an end ; and when the ship. 

Quitting her fairly of the injurious sea,t 

had entered the smooth waters of that stately river, and was 
gliding 

Into the bosom of her quiet quay,t 

he felt that the delight of setting foot on shore after a sea 
voyage, and that too the shore of a foreign country, for the 
first time, is one of the few pleasures which exceed any ex- 
pectation that can be formed of them. 

He used to speak of his landing, on a fine autumnal noon, 
in the well- wooded and well-watered city of Rotterdam, and 
of his journey along what he called the high turnpike canal 
from thence to Leyden, as some of the pleasantest recoUec- 

* B. Jonson, v. 8, p. 37. t Quarles. 



THE DOCTOR. 21 1 

tiona of his life. Nothing, he said, was wanting to his en- 
joyment, but that there should have been some one to have 
partaken it with him in an equal degree. But the feeling 
that he was alone in a foreign land sat lightly on him, and did 
not continue long ; young as he was, with life and hope be- 
fore him, healthful of body and mind, cheerful as the natural 
consequence of that health corporeal and mental, and having 
always much to notice and enough to do — the one being an 
indispensable condition of happiness, the other a source of 
pleasure as long as it lasts ; and where there is a quick eye 
and an inquiring mind, the longest residence abroad is hardly 
long enough to exhaust it. 

No day in Daniel's life had ever passed in such constant 
and pleasurable excitement as that on which he made his 
passage from Rotterdam to Leyden, and took possession of 
the lodging which Peter Hopkins's correspondent had en- 
gaged for him. His reception was such as instantly to make 
him feel that he was placed with worthy people. The little 
apprehensions, rather than anxieties, which the novelty of 
his situation occasioned, the sight of strange faces with 
which he was to be domesticated, and the sound of a strange 
language, to which, harsh and uninviting as it seemed, his 
ear and speech must learn to accustom themselves, did not 
disquiet his first night's rest. And having fallen asleep not- 
withstanding the new position to which a Dutch bolster con 
strained him, he was not disturbed by the §torks, 

" all night 
Beating the air with their obstreperous beaks," 

(for with Ben Jonson's leave, this may much more appropri 
ately be said of them than of the ravens,) nor by the watch 
men's rappers, or clapsticks, which seem to have been in- 
vented in emulous imitation of the stork's instrumental per- 
formance. 

But you and I, reader, can afford to make no tarriance in 
Leyden. I cannot remain with you here till you could see the 
rector magnificus in his magnificence. I cannot accompany 
you to the monument of that rash baron who set the crown 
of Bohemia in evil hour upon the elector palatine's unlucky 
head. I cannot take you to the graves of Boerhaave and of 
Scaliger. I cannot go with you into that library of which 
Heinsius said, when he was librarian there, " I no sooner set 
foot in it and fasten the door, but I shut out ambition, love, 
and all those vices of which idleness is the mother and igno- 
rance the nurse ; and in the very lap of eternity among so 
many illustrious souls I take my seat, with so lofty a spirit, 
that I then pity the great who know nothing of such happi- 
ness." Plerunque in qud simulac pedem posui, Joribus pessu- 
liim ahdo, ambitionem autem, amorem, libidinem, <^c., excludoy 
10 



212 THE DOCTOR. 

quorum parens est ignavia, imperitia nuirix ; et in ipso cBterm 
talis gremio, inter tot illustres animas sedem mihi sumo, cum 
ingenti quidem animo, ut suhinde magnatum me misereat qui 
felicitatem hanc ignorant! I cannot walk with you round 
the ramparts, from which wide, circling, and well shaded 
promenade you might look down upon a large part of the 
more than two thousand gardens which a century ago sur- 
rounded this most horticultural city of a horticultural prov- 
ince, the garden, as it was called, of Holland, that is, of the 
land of gardeners. I cannot even go up the Burgt with you, 
though it be pretended that the Hengist of Anglo-Saxon 
history erected it ; nor can I stop at the entrance of that odd 
place, for you to admire (as you could not but admire) the 
lion of the United Provinces, that stands there erect and 
rampant in menacing attitude, grinning horribly a ghastly 
smile, his eyes truculent, his tail in full elevation, and in 
action correspondent to his motto Pugnopro Patria, wielding 
a drawn sword in his dreadful right paw. 

Dear reader, we cannot afford time for going to Oegst- 
geest, though the first church in Holland is said to have 
been founded there by St. Willebord, and its burial ground is 
the Campo Santo of the Dutch Roman Catholics, as Bunhill 
Fields of the English dissenters. Nor can I accompany 
thee to Noortwyck, and describe to thee its fish ponds, its 
parterres, the arabesque carpetwork of its box, and the espa- 
lier walls or hedges, with the busts which were set in the 
archways, such as they existed when our doctor, in his ante- 
doctorial age, was a student at Leyden, having been kept up 
till that time in their old fashion by the representatives of 
Janus Dousa. We cannot, dear reader, tarry to visit the 
gardens in that same pleasant village, from which the neigh- 
bouring cities are supplied with medicinal plants ; where beds 
of ranunculuses afford, when in blossom, a spectacle which 
no exhibition of art could rival in splendour and beauty, and 
from whence rose leaves are exported to Turkey, there to 
have their essential oil extracted for Mohammedan luxury. 

We must not go to see the sluices of the Rhine, which 
Daniel never saw, because in his time the Rhine had no out- 
let through these Downs. We cannot walk upon the shore at 
Katwyck, where it was formerly a piece of Dutch court- 
ship for the wooer to take his mistress in his arms, carry 
her into the sea till he was 'more than knee deep, set her 
down upon her feet, and then, bearing her out again, roll her 
over and over upon the sand hills by way of drying her. We 
have no time for visiting that scene of the Batavian Arcadia. 
No, reader, I cannot tarry to show thee the curiosities of 
Leyden, nor to talk over its memorabilia, nor to visit the 
pleasant parts of the surrounding country, though Gerard 
Goris says, that comme la ville de Leide, entouree par les plai- 
sants villages de Soeterwoude, Stompvic, Wilsvcen, Tedinger- 



THE DOCTOR. 



213 



broeky Ougstgeest, Leiderdorp^ et Vennep, est la centre et la 
delice de touts Hollande, ainsi la campagne a Ventour de cetle 
celebre ville est comme un autre Eden on jardin de plaisance^ 
qui avec ses beaux attraiis tellement transporte Vattention du 
spectateur qu'il se trouve contraint, comme par un ravissement 
d* esprit, de confesser quHl rCa jamais veu pais au monde, ou 
Vart et la nature si bien ont pris leurs mesures pour aporter et 
entremeler tout ce qui pent servir a Vaise, a la recreation, et au 
profit. 

No, reader, we must not linger here, 

" Hier, waar in Hollands heerlijkste oorden 

De lieve Lente zoeterlacht, 
Het schroeiend Zud, het grijnzend Noorden 

Zijn' gloed en strenge hou verzacht ; 
Waar nijverheid en blij genoegen, 
Waar stilte en vlijt zich* samenvoegen." 

We must return to Doncaster. It would not be conve- 
nient for me to enter minutely, even if my materials were 
sufficient for that purpose, into the course of our student's 
life, from the time he was entered among the greenies of 
this famous university, nor to describe the ceremonies which 
were used at his ungreening by his associates, nor the aca- 
demical ones with which at the termination of his regular 
terms his degree in medicine was conferred. T can only tell 
thee that during his residence at Leyden he learned with 
exemplary dihgence whatever he was expected to learn 
there, and by the industrious use of good opportunities, a 
great deal more. 

But — he fell in love with a burgemeester's daughter ! 



CHAPTER LI. P. I. 

ARMS OF LEYDEN — DANIEL DOVE, M. D. — A LOVE STORY, STRANGE 
BUT TRUE. 

Oye el extrano caso, advierte y siente ; 
Suceso es rare, mas verdad ha side. 

Balbuena. 

The arms of Leyden are two cross keys, gules in a field 
argent; and having been intrusted with the power of those 
keys to bind and to loose, and, moreover, to bleed and to 
blister, to administer at his discretion pills, potions, and 
powders, and to employ the whole artillery of the pharma- 

* Leyden's Ramp. 



214 THE DOCTOR. 

copoeia, Daniel returned to Doncaster. The papal keys con- 
vey no such general power as the keys of Leyden: they 
give authority over the conscience and the soul ; now, it is 
not every man that has a conscience, or that chooses to keep 
one ; wnd as for souls, if it were not an article of faith to 
believe otherwise, one might conclude that the greater part 
of mankind had none, from the utter disregard of them which 
is manifested in the whole course of their dealings with each 
other. But bodily diseases are among the afflictions which 
flesh is heir to ; and we are not more surely^rM^es consumere 
nati, than we are born to consume physic also, greatly to the 
benefit of that profession in which Daniel Dove had now ob- 
tained his commission. 

But though he was now M.D. in due form, and entitled to 
the insignia of the professional wig, the muff, and the gold- 
headed cane, it was not Mr. Hopkins's intention that he 
should assume his title, and commence practice as a physi- 
cian. This would have been an unpromising adventure ; 
whereas, on the other hand, the consideration which a regular 
education at Leyden. then the most flourishing school of medi- 
cine, would obtain for him in the vicinity was a sure advantage. 
Hopkins could now present him as a person thoroughly qual- 
ified to be his successor : and if at any future time Dove 
should think proper to retire from the more laborious parts 
of his calling, and take up his rank, it would be in his power 
to do so. 

But one part of my readers are, I suspect, at this time a 
little impatient to know something about the burgemeester's 
daughter ; and I, because of the 

allegiance and fast fealty 
Which I do owe unto all womankind,* 

am bound to satisfy their natural and becoming curiosity. 
Not, however, in this place ; for though love has its bitters I 
never will mix it up in the same chapter with physic. Dan- 
iel's passion for the burgemeester's daughter must be treated 
of in a chapter by itself, this being a mark of respect due to 
the subject, to her beauty, and to the dignity of mynheer, her 
wel edei, goot, hoogh-achtbaer father. 

First, however, I must dispose of an objection. 

There may be readers who, though they can understand 
why a lady, instead of telling her love, should 

" let concealment, like a worm in the bud, 
Feed on her damask cheek," 

w411 think it absurd to believe that any man should fix his 
affections as Daniel did upon the burgemeester's daughter, 

* Spenser. 



THE DOCTOR. 215 

on a person whom he had no hopes of obtaining and with 
whom, as will presently appear, he never interchanged a 
word. 1 cannot help their mcredulity. But if they will not 
believe me they may perhaps believe the newspapers, which, 
about the year 1810, related the following case in point: — 

" A short time since a curious circumstance happened. 
The rector of St. Martin's parish was sent for to pray by a 
gentleman of the name of Wright, who lodged in St. James's- 
street, Pimlico. A few days afterward, Mr. Wright's solicitor 
called on the rector, to inform him that Mr. W^right was dead, 
and had made a codicil to his will, wherein he had left him 
1,000/., and Mr. Abbott, the speaker of thehonse of commons, 
2,000^., and all his personal property and estates, deer park, 
and fisheries, &c., to Lady Frances Bruce Brudeneil, daughter 
of the Earl of Ailesburys. Upon the rector's going to Lord 
Ailesbury's to inform her ladyship, the house steward said 
she was married to Sir Henry Wilson of Chelsea Park, but he 
would go to her ladyship and inform her of the matter. Lady 
Frances said she did not know any such person as Mr. 
Wright, but desired the steward to go to the rector to get the 
whole particulars, and say she would wait on him the next 
day : she did so, and found to her great astonishment that 
the whole was true. She afterward went to St. James's- 
street and saw Mr. Wright in his coffin ; and then she recol- 
lected him, as having been a great annoyance to her many 
years ago at the operahouse, where he had a box next to 
hers : he never spoke to her, but was continually watching 
her, look wherever she would, till at length she was under 
the necessity of requesting her friends to procure another 
box. The estates are from 20 to 30,000Z. a year. Lady 
Frances intends putting all her family into mourning out of 
respect." 

Whether such a bequest ought to have been held good in 
law, and if so, whether it ought in conscience to have been 
accepted, are points upon which I should probably differ botlj 
from the lord chancellor and the lady legatee, 



216 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER LII. P. I 

SHOWING HOW THE YOUNG STUDENT FELL IN LOVE AND HOW 

HE MADE THE BEST USE OF HIS MISFORTUNE. 

II creder, donne vaghe, e cortesia, 

Quando colui che scrive o che favella, 
Possa essere sospetto di bugia, 

Per dir qualcosa troppo rara e bella. 
Dunque chi ascolta questa istoria mea 

E non la crede frottola o novella 
Ma cosa vera — come ella h di fatto, 
Fa che di lui mi chiami soddisfatto 

E pure che mi diate plena fede, 
De la dubbiezza altrui poco mi cale. 

RiCCIARDETTO. 

Dear ladies, I can neither tell you the name of the bur- 
gemeester's daughter, nor of the burgemeester himself. If 
I ever heard them they have escaped my recollection. The 
doctor used to say his love for her was in two respects like 
the smallpox ; for he took it by inoculation, and having taken 
it, he was secured from ever having the disease in a more 
dangerous form. 

The case was a very singular one. Had it not been so it 
is probable 1 should never have been made acquainted with 
it. Most men seem to consider their unsuccessful love, when 
it is over, as a folly which they neither like to speak of, nor 
to remember. 

Daniel Dove never was introduced to the burgemeester's 
daughter, never was in company with her, and, as already has 
been intimated, never spoke to her. As for any hope of ever 
by any possibility obtaining a return of his affection, a devout 
Roman Cathohc might upon much better grounds hope that 
Saint Ursula, or any of her eleven thousand virgins, would 
come from her place in heaven to reward his devotion with 
a kiss. The gulf between Dives and Lazarus was not more 
insuperable than the distance between such an English 
greeny at Leyden and a burgemeester's daughter. 

Here, therefore, dear ladies, you cannot look to read of 

Le speranze, gli afFetti, 

La data fe', le tenerezze, i primi 

Scambievoli sospiri, i primi sguardi.* 

Nor will it be possible for me to give you 

* Metasia. 



THE LOCTOR. 217 



I'idea di ijuel volto 
Dove apprese il siio core 
La prima volta a sospirar d'amore.'' 



This I cannot do ; for 1 never saw her picture, nor heard her 
features described. And most likely if 1 had seen her her- 
self, in her youth and beauty, the most accurate description 
that words could convey might be just as like Fair Rosa- 
mond, Helen, Rachel, or Eve. Suffice it to say that she was 
confessedly the beauty of that city, and of those parts. 

But it was not for the fame of her beauty that Daniel fell 
in love with her : so little was there of this kind of romance 
in his nature, that report never raised in him the slightest de- 
sire of seeing her. Her beauty was no more than Hecuba's 
to him, till he saw it. But it so happened that having once 
seen it, he saw it frequently, at leisure, and always to the best 
advantage : " and so," said he, " I received the disease by 
inoculation." 

Thus it was. There was at Leyden an English Presbyte- 
rian kirk for the use of the English students, and any other 
persons who might choose to frequent it. Daniel felt the 
want there of that liturgy in the use of which he had been 
trained up : and finding nothing which could attract him to 
that place of worship except the use of his own language — 
which, moreover, was not used by the preacher in any way to 
his edification — he listened willingly to the advice of the good 
man with whom he boarded, and this was that, as soon as he 
had acquired a slight knowledge of the Dutch tongue, he 
should, as a means of improving himself in it, accompany the 
family to their parish church. Now this happened to be the 
very church which the burgemeester and his family attended : 
and if the allotment of pews in that church had been laid out 
by Cupid himself, with the fore-purpose of catching Daniel as 
in a pitfall, his position there in relation to the burgemees- 
ter's daughter could not have been more exactly fixed. 

" God forgive me !" said he ; " for every Sunday while she 
was worshipping her Maker, I used to worship her." 

But the folly went no further than this ; it led him into no 
act of absurdity, for he kept it to himself; and he even turned 
it to some advantage, or rather it shaped for itself a useful di- 
rection, in this way : having frequent and unobserved oppor- 
tunity of observing her lovely face, the countenance became 
fixed so perfectly in his mind, that even after the lapse of forty 
years, he was sure, he said, that if he had possessed a paint- 
er's art he could have produced her likeness. And having her 
beauty thus impressed upon his imagination, any other ap- 
peared to him only as a foil to it, during that part of his life 

* Metasia. 



218 THE DOCTOR. 

when he was so circumstanced that it would have been an act 
of imprudence for him to run in love. 

I smile to think how many of my readers, when they are 
reading this chapter aloud in a domestic circle, will bring up 
at the expression of running in love ; like a stage-coach man 
who, driving at the smooth and steady pace of nine miles an 
hour on a macadamized road, comes upon some accidental ob- 
struction only just in time to check the horses. 

Amorosa who flies into love ; and Amatura who flutters as 
if she were about to do the same ; and Amoretta who dances 
into it ; (poor creatures, God help them all three !) and Aman- 
da — Heaven bless her ! — who will be led to it gently and lei- 
surely along the path of discretion — they all make a sudden 
stop at the words. 



CHAPTER LHI. P. I. 

OP THE VARIOUS WAYS OF GETTING IN LOVE A CHAPTER CON- 
TAINING SOME USEFUL OBSERVATIONS, AND SOME BEAUTIFUL 
POETRY. 

Let cavillers know, that as the Lord John answered the queen in that 
Italian Guazzo, an old, a grave, discreet man is fittest to discourse of love 
matters ; because he hath likely more experience, observed more, hath 
a more staid judgment, can better discern, resolve, discuss, advise, give 
better cautions and more solid precepts, better inform his auditors in such 
a subject, and by reason of his riper years, sooner divert.— Burton. 

Slips of the tongue are sometimes found very inconvenient 
by those persons who, owing to some unlucky want of cor- 
respondence between their wits and their utterance, say one 
thing when they mean another, or bolt out something which 
the slightest degree of forethought would have kept unsaid. 
But more serious mischief arises from that misuse of words 
which occurs in all inaccurate writers. Many are the men 
who, merely for want of understanding what they say, have 
blundered into heresies and erroneous assertions of every 
kind, which they have afterward passionately and pertina- 
ciously defended, till they have established themselves in 
the profession, if not in the belief, of some pernicious doctrine 
or opinion, to their own great injury and that of their deluded 
followers, and of the commonwealth. 

There may be an opposite fault ; for indeed upon the 
agathokakological globe there are opposite qualities always 
to be found in parallel degrees, north and south of the equa- 
tor 



THE DOCTOR. 219 

A man may dwell upon words till he becomes at length a 
mere precisian in speech. He may think of their meaning till 
he loses sight of all meaning, and they appear as dark and 
mysterious to him as chaos and outer night. " Death ! 
grave !" exclaims Goethe's suicide, " I understand not the 
words !" and so he who looks for its quintessence might ex- 
claim of every word in the dictionary. 

They who cannot swim should be content with wading 
in the shallows : they who can may take to the deep water, 
no matter how deep, so it be clear. But let no one dive in the 
mud. 

I said that Daniel fell in love with the burgemeester's 
daughter, and I made use of the usual expression because 
there it was the most appropriate : for the thing was ac- 
cidental. He himself could not have been more surprised 
if, missing his way in a fog, and supposing himself to be in 
the Breedeslraat of Leyden where there is no canal, he had 
fallen into the water ; nor would he have been more com- 
pletely over head and ears at once. 

A man falls in love just as he falls down stairs. It is an 
accident — perhaps and veiy probably a misfortune; some- 
thing which he neither intended, nor foresaw, nor appre- 
hended. But when he runs in love it is as when he runs in 
debt ; it is done knowingly and intentionally ; and very often 
rashly and foolishly, even if not ridiculously, miserably, and 
ruinously. 

Marriages that are made up at watering-places are mostly 
of this running sort ; and there may be reason to think that 
they are even less likely to lead to — 1 will not say hap- 
piness, but to a very humble degree of contentment, than 
those which are a plain business of bargain and sale ; for 
into these latter a certain degree of prudence enters on both 
sides. But there is a distinction to be made here : the man 
who is married for mere worldly motives, without a spark 
of affection on the woman's part, may nevertheless get, in 
every worldly sense of the word, a good wife ; and while 
English women continue to be what, thank Heaven, they are, 
he is likely to do so : but when a woman is married for the 
sake of her fortune, the case is altered, and the chances are 
five hundred to one that she marries a villain, or at best a 
scoundrel. 

Falling in love and running in love are both, as every- 
body knows, common enough ; and yet less so than what I 
shall call catching love. Where the love itself is imprudent, 
that is to say where there is some just prudential cause or 
impediment why the two parties should not be joined to- 
gether in holy matrimony, there is generally some degree 
of culpable imprudence in catching it, because the danger is 
always to be apprehended, and may in most cases be avoided. 
But sometimes the circumstances may be such as leave no 
10* 



220 THE DOCTOR. 

room for censure, even when there may be most cause for 
compassion ; and under such circumstances our friend — 
though the remembrance of the burgemeester's daughter 
was too vivid in his imagination for him ever to run in love, 
or at that time deliberately to walk into it. as he afterward 
did — under such circumstances, I say, he took a severe 
affection of this kind. The story is a melancholy one, and 
I shall relate not it in this place. 

The rarest, and surely the happiest marriages, are between 
those who have grown in love. Take the description of 
such a love in its rise and progress, ye thousands and tens 
of thousands who have what is called a taste for poetry, 
take it in the sweet words of one of the sweetest and ten- 
derest of English poets ; and if ye doubt upon the strength 
of my opinion whether Daniel deserves such praise, ask 
Leigh Hunt, or the laureate, or Wordsworth, or Charles 
Lamb. 

Ah ! I remember well (and how can I 

But evermore remember well) when first 

Our flame began, when scarce we knew what was 

The flame we felt ; when as we sat and sighed 

And looked upon each other, and conceived 

Not what we ailed — yet something we did ail ; 

And yet were well, and yet we were not well, 

And what was our disease we could not tell. 

Then would we kiss, then sigh, then look : and thus 

In that first garden of our simpleness 

We spent our childhood. But when years began 

To reap the fruit of knowledge, ah, how then 

Would she with graver looks, with sweet stem brow, 

Check my presumption and my forwardness ; 

Yet still would give me flowers, still would me show 

What she would have me, yet not have me know. 

Take also the passage that presently follows this : it alludes 
to a game which has long been obsolete ; but some fair 
reader I doubt not will remember the lines when she dances 
next. 

And when in sport with other company 
Of nymphs and shepherds we have met abroad. 
How would she steal a look, and watch mine eye 
Which way it went ? And when at barley-break 
It C£mie unto my turn to rescue her, 
With what an earnest, swift, and nimble pace 
Would her affection make her feet to rnn. 
And farther run than to my hand ! her race 
Had no stop but my bosom, where no end. 
And when we were to break again, how late 
And loath her trembling hand would part with mine ; 
And with how slow a pace would she set forth 
To meet the encountering party who contends 
To attain her, scarce affording him her fingers' ends ! * 

* Hymen's Triumph. 



THE DOCTOR. 221 



CHAPTER LIV. P. I. 

MORE CONCERNING LOVE AND MARRIAGE, AND MARRIAGE WITHOUT 
LOVE. 

Nay, Cupid, pitch thy trammel where thou please, 
Thou canst not fail to catch such fish as these. 

QUARLES. 

Whether chance or choice have most to do in the weighty 
concerns of love and matrimony, is as difficult a question, 
as whether chance or skill have most influence upon a game 
at backgammon. Both enter into the constitution of the 
game ; and choice will always have some little to do with 
love, though so many other operating motives may be com- 
bined with it, that it sometimes bears a very insignificant 
part : but from marriage it is too frequently precluded on 
the one side, unwilling consent, and submission to painful 
circumstances supplying its place; and there is one sect 
of Christians, (the Moravians,) who, where they hold to the 
rigour of their institute, preclude it on both sides. They 
marry by lot ; and if divorces ever take place among them, 
the scandal has not been divulged to the profaner world. 

Choice, however, is exercised among all other Christians ; 
or where not exercised, it is presumed by a fiction of law or 
of divinity, call it which you will. The husband even insists 
upon it in China, where the pig is bought in a poke ; for when 
pigsnie arrives, and the purchaser opens the close sedan 
chair in which she has been conveyed to his house, if he does 
not like her looks at first sight, he shuts her up again, and 
sends her back. 

But when a bachelor, who has no particular attachment, 
makes up his mind to take unto himself a wife, for those 
reasons to which Uncle Toby referred the Widow Wadman, 
as being to be found in the Book of Common Prayer, how 
then to choose is a matter of much more difficulty, than one 
who has never considered it could suppose. It would not be 
paradoxical to assert, that in the sort of choice which such a 
person makes, chance has a much greater part than either 
affection or judgment. To set about seeking a wife, is like 
seeking one's fortune, and the probability of finding a good 
one in such a quest is less, though poor enough. Heaven 
knows, in both cases. 

The bard has sung, God never form'd a soul 

Without its own peculiar mate, to meet 
Its wandering half, when ripe to crown the whole 

Bright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most complete .' 



222 THE DOCTOR. 

But thousand evil things there are that hate 

To look on happiness; these hurt, impede, 
And leagued with time, space, circumstance, and fate, 

Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine and pant and bleed- 

And as the dove to far Palmyra flying, 

F/om where her native founts of Antioch beam, 

Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing, 
Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream ; 

So many a soul o'er life's drear desert faring. 
Love's pure congenial spring unfound, unquaflf'd, 

Suffers, recoils, then thirsty and despairing 
Of what it would, descends and sips the nearest draught.* 

So sings Maria del Occidente, the most impassioned and 
most imaginative of all poetesses. 

According to the new revelation of the Saint Simonians, 
every individual human being has had a fitting mate created, 
the one and only woman for every individual man, and the 
one and only man for every individual woman ; and unless 
the persons so made, fitted and intended for each other, meet 
and are joined together in matrimonial bonds, there can be no 
perfect marriage for either, that harmonious union for which 
they were designed being frustrated for both. Read the 
words of the chief of the new hierarchy himself, Father 
Bazard : II ny a sur la terre pour chaque homme qu'une settle 
femme, et pour chaque Jemme qu'un seul homme, qui soieyit des- 
tines d former dans le manage Vunion. harmonique du couple. 
Grace aux lumieres de cette revelation, les individus les plus 
advances peuvent aussi des aujourd'hui seniir el former le lien qui 
doit les unir dans le mariage. 

But if Sinner Simon and his disciples (most assuredly they 
ought to be unsainted !) were right in this doctrine, happy 
marriages would be far more uncommon than they are ; the 
man might with better likelihood of finding it look for a 
needle in a bottle of hay, than seek for his other half in this 
wide world; and the woman's chance would be so im- 
measurably less, that no intelligible form of figures could 
express her fraction of it. 

The man who gets in love because he has determined to 
marry, instead of marrying because he is in love, goes about 
to private parties and to public places in search of a wife ; 
and there he is attracted by a woman's appearance, and the 
figure which she makes in public, not by her amiable deport- 
ment, her domestic qualities, and her good report. Watering- 
places might with equal propriety be called fishing-places, 
because they are frequented by female anglers, who are in 
quest of such prey, the elder for their daughters, the younger 
for themselves. But it is a dangerous sport, for the fair 

* Zophiel 



THE DOCTOR. 223 

piscatrix is not more likely to catch a bonito, or a dorado, 
than she is to be caught by a shark. 

Thomas Day, not old Thomas Day of the old glee, nor the 
young Thomas Day either — a father and son whose names 
are married to immortal music — but the Thomas Day who 
wrote Sandford and Merton, and who had a heart which 
generally led him right, and a head which as generally led 
him wrong ; that Thomas Day thought that the best way of 
obtaining a wife to his mind, was to breed one up for himself. 
So he selected two little orphan girls from a charity school, 
with the intention of marrying, indue time, the one whom he 
should like best. Of coursre such proper securities as could 
alone justify the managers of the charity in consenting to so 
uncommon a transaction, were required and given. The ex- 
periment succeeded in everything — except its specific ob- 
ject ; for he found at last that love was not a thing thus to 
be bespoken on either side ; and his Lucretia and Sabrina, as 
he named them, grew up to be good wives for other men. I 
do not know whether the life of Thomas Day has yet found 
its appropriate place in the Wonderful Magazine, or in the 
collection entitled Eccentric Biography, but the reader may 
find it livelily related in Miss Seward's Life of Darwin. 

The experiment of breeding a wife is not likely to be re- 
peated. None but a most determiaied theorist would attempt 
it : and to carry it into effect, would require considerable 
means of fortune, not to mention a more than ordinary share 
of patience ; after which there must needs be a greater dis- 
parity of years than can be approved in theory, upon any due 
consideration of human nature, and any reasonable estimate 
of the chances of human life. 



CHAPTER LV. P. I. 



THE AUTHOR S LAST VISIT TO DONCASTER. 

Fuere quondam hsec sed fuere ; 

Nunc ubi sint, rogitas? Id annos 
Scire hos oportet scilicet. O bona?. 
Musae, O Lepores — O Charites meraB ! 

O gaudia offuscata nuUis 

Litibus ! O sine nube soles ! 

Janus Douza. 



1 HAVE more to say, dear ladies, upon that which to you is, 
and ought to be, the most interesting of all worldly subjects, 
matrimony, and the various ways by which it is brought 
about; but this is not the place for saying it. The doctor 



224 THE DOCTOR. 

is not at this time thinking of a wife : his heart can no more 
be taken, so long as it retains the lively image of the burge- 
meester's daughter, than Troy town while the palladium was 
safe. 

Imagine him, therefore, in the year of our Lord 1747, and 
in the twenty-sixth year of his age, returned to Doncaster, 
with the burgemeester's daughter, seated, like the lady in the 
lobster, in his inmost breast ; with physic in his head, and at 
his fingers' ends ; and with an appetite for knowledge which 
had long been feeding voraciously, digesting well, and in- 
creasing in its growth by what it fed on. Imagine him re- 
turned to Doncaster, and welcomed once more as a son by 
the worthy old Peter Hopkins and his good wife, in that 
comfortable habitation which I have heretofore described, 
and of which (as was at the same time stated) you may see 
a faithful representation in Miller's history of that good 
town; a faithful representation, I say, of what it was in 
1804 : the drawing was by Frederic Nash, and Edward Shirt 
made a shift to engrave it : the house had then undergone 
some alterations since the days when I frequented it ; and 
now — 

Of all things in this our mortal pilgrimage one of the most 
joyful is the returning home after an absence which has 
been long enough to make the heart yearn with hope, and 
not sicken with it, and then to find when you arrive there 
that all is well. But the most purely painful of all painful 
things is to visit, after a long, long interval of time, the place 
which was once our home ; the most purely painful, because 
it is unmixed with fear, anxiety, disappointment, or any 
other emotion but what belongs to the sense of time and 
change, then pressing upon us with its whole unalleviated 
weight. 

It was my fortune to leave Doncaster early in life ; and, 
having passed jytr varios casus, and through as large a pro- 
portion of good and evil in my humble sphere as the pious 
^neas, though not exactly per tot discrimina rerum, not to 
see it again till after an absence of more than forty years, 
when my way happened to lie through that town. I should 
never have had heart purposely to visit it, for that would 
have been seeking sorrow ; but to have made a circuit for 
the sake of avoiding the place would have been an act of 
weakness ; and no man who has a proper degree of self-re- 
spect will do anything of which he might justly feel ashamed. 
It was evening, and late in autumn when I entered Doncas- 
ter, and alighted at the Old Angel Inn. " The Old Angel !" 
said I to my fellow-traveller ; " you see that even angels on 
earth grow old i" 

My companion knew how deeply I had been indebted to 
Dr. Dove, and with what affection I cherished his memory. 
We presently sallied forth to look at his former habitation. 



THE DOCTOR. 225 

Totally unknown as I now am in Doncaster, (where there 
is probably not one living soul who remembers either me 
or my very name,) I had determined to knock at the door, 
at a suitable hour on the morrow, and ask permission to 
enter the house in which I had passed so many happy and 
memorable hours, long ago. My age and appearance I 
thought might justify this liberty ; and I intended also to go 
into the garden and see if any of the fruit trees were re- 
maining, which my venerable friend had planted, and from 
which I had so often plucked and ate. 

When we came there, there was nothing by which I 
could have recognised the spot, had it not been for the Man- 
sionhouse that immediately joined it. Half of its site had 
been levelled to make room for a street or road which had 
been recently opened. Not a vestige remained of the gar- 
den behind. The remaining part of the house had been re- 
built ; and when I read the name of R. Dennison on the door 
it was something consolatory to see that the door itself was 
not the same which had so often opened to admit me. 

Upon returning to the spot on the following morning I 
perceived that the part which had been rebuilt is employed 
as some sort of official appendage to the Mansionhouse ; 
and on the naked side wall now open to the new street, or 
road, I observed more distinctly where the old tall chimney 
had stood, and the outline of the old pointed roof. These 
were the only vestiges that remained ; they could have no 
possible interest in any eyes but mine, which were likely 
never to behold them again ; and indeed it was evident that 
they would soon be effaced as a deformity, and the naked 
side wall sfnoothed over with plaster. But they will not be 
effaced from my memory, for they were the last traces of 
that dwelling which is the kebla of my retrospective daj* 
dreams, the sanctum sanctorum of my dearest recollections ; 
and like an apparition from the dead, once seen, they were 
never to be forgotten. 



226 THE DOCTOR 



CHAPTER LVI. P. I. 

A TRUCE WITH MELANCHOLY GENTLEMEN SUCH AS THEY WERE 

IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1747 A HINT TO YOUNG LADIES 

CONCERNING THEIR GREAT-GRANDMOTHERS. 

Fashions that are now called new, 
Have been worn by more than yoa ; 
Elder times have used the same, 
Though these new ones get the name. 

MlDDLETON. 

Well might Ben Jonson call bellringinff " the poetry of 
steeples !" It is a poetry which in some heart or other is al- 
ways sure to move an accordant key ; and there is not much 
of the poetry, so called by courtesy because it bears the 
appearance of verse, of which this can be said with equal 
truth. Doncaster since I was one of its inhabitants had 
been so greatly changed (improved I ought to say, for its 
outward changes had really been improvements) that there 
was nothing but my own recollections to carry me back into 
the past, till the clock of St. George's struck nine on the 
evening of our arrival, and its chimes began to measure out 
the same time in the same tones, which I used to hear as 
regularly as the hours came round, forty long years ago. 

Enough of this ! My visit to Doncaster was incidentally 
introduced by the comparison which I could not choose but 
make between such a return, and that of the student from 
Leyden. We must now revert to the point from whence I 
strayed and go farther back than the forty years over which 
the chimes as if with magic had transported me. We must 
go back to the year 1747, when gentlemen wore sky-blue 
coats, with silver button holes and huge cuffs extending more 
than halfway from the middle of the hand t(' the elbow, 
short breeches just reaching to the silver garters at the knee, 
and embroidered waistcoasts with long flaps which came 
almost as low. Were I to describe Daniel Dove in the wig 
which he then wore, and which observed a modest mean be- 
tween the bush of the apothecary and the consequential fore- 
top of the physician, with its depending knots, fore and aft ; 
were I to describe him in a sober suit of brown or snuff- 
coloured dittos such as beseemed his profession, but with 
cuffs of the dimensions, waistcoat flaps of the length, and 
breeches of the brevity before mentioned ; Amorosa, and 
Amatura, and Amoretta would exclaim that love ought never 
to be named in connection with such a figure — Amabilis, 
sweet girl in the very bloom of innocence and opening youth. 



THE DOCTOR. 227 

would declare she never could love such a creature, and 
Amanda herself would smile, not contemptuously, nor at 
her idea of the man, but at the mutabihty of fashion. Smile 
if you will, young ladies ! your great-grandmothers wore large 
hoops, peaked stomachers, and modesty bits ; their riding hab- 
its and waistcoats were trimmed with silver, and they had 
very gentlemanlike perukes for riding m,as well as gentleman- 
like cocked hats. Yet, young ladies, they were as gay and 
giddy in their time as you are now, they were as attractive 
and as lovely; they were not less ready than you are to 
laugh at the fashions of those who had gone before them ; 
they were wooed and won by gentlemen in short breeches, 
long flapped waistcoats, large cuffs, and tie wigs; and the 
wooing and wimiing proceeded much in the same manner as 
it had done in the g-enerations before them, as the same 
agreeable part of this world's business proceeds among 
yourselves, and as it will proceed when you will be as hltle 
thought of by your great-grand-daughters as your great- 
grand-mothers are at this time by you. What care you for 
your great-grand-mothers ! 

The law of entails sufficiently proves that our care for 
our posterity is carried far, sometimes indeed beyond what 
is reasonable and just. On the other hand it is certain that 
the sense of relationship in the ascending line produces in 
general little other feeling than that of pride in the haughty 
and highborn. That it should be so to a certain degree, is 
in the order of nature and for the general good: but that in 
our selfish state of society this indifference for our ancestors 
is greater than the order of nature would of itself produce, 
may be concluded from the very different feeling which pre- 
vailed among some of the ancients, and still prevails in other 
parts of the world. 

He who said that he did not see why he should be ex- 
pected to do anything for posterity, when posterity had 
done nothing for him, might be deemed to have shown as 
much worthlessness as wit in this saying, if it were anything 
more than the sportive sally of a light-hearted man. Yet 
one who "keeps his heart with all diligence,"' knowing that 
"out of it are the issues of life," will take heed never 
hghtiy to entertain a thought that seems to make light of a 
duty — still less will he give it utterance. VVe owe much 
to posterity, nothing less than all that we have received 
from our forefathers. And for myself, I should be unwiUing 
to believe that nothing is due from us to our ancestors. If 
I did not acquire this feehng from the person who is the 
subject of these volumes, it was at least confirmed by him 

He used to say that one of the gratifications which he 
promised himself after death, was that of becoming ac- 
quainted with all his progenitors, in order, degree above 
iegree, up to Noah, and from him up to our first parents. 



228 THE DOCTOR. 

" But," said he, " though I mean to proceed regularly step 
by step, curiosity will make me in one instance trespass 
upon this proper arrangement, and I shall take the earliest 
opportunity of paying my respects to Adam and Eve." 



CHAPTER LVII. P. I. 

AN ATTEMPT IS MADE TO REMOVE THE UNPLEASANT IMPRESSION 
PRODUCED UPON THE LADIES BV THE DOCTOR's TIE WIG AND 
HIS SUIT OF SNUFF-COLOURED DITTOS. 

So full of shapes is fancy, 
That it alone is high fantastical. 

Twelfth Night. 

I MUST not allow the feminine part of my readers to sup- 
pose that the doctor, when in his prime of life, vvas not a 
very likable person in appearance, as well as in every- 
thing else, although he wore what in the middle of the last 
century was the costume of a respectable country practi- 
tioner in medicine. Though at Leyden he could only look 
at a burgemeester's daughter as a cat may look at a king, 
there was not a mayor or alderman's daughter in Doncaster 
who would have thought herself disparaged if he had fixed 
his eyes upon her, and made her a proffer of his hand. 

Yet, as, in the opinion of many, dress " makes the man," 
and anything which departs widely from the standard of 
dress, " the fellow," I must endeavour to give those young 
ladies who are influenced more than they ought to be, and 
perhaps more than they are aware, by such an opinion, a 
more favourable notion of the doctor's appearance, than they 
are likely to have if they bring him before their eyes in the 
fashion of his times. It will not assist this intention on my 
part, if I request you to look at him as you would look at a 
friend who was dressed in such a costume for a masquerade 
or a fancy ball; for your friend would expect and wish to 
be laughed at, having assumed the dress for that benevolent 
purpose. Well, then, let us take off the aforesaid sad snufF- 
coloured coat with broad deep cuffs ; still the waistcoat with 
its long flaps, and the breeches that barely reach to the knee, 
will provoke your merriment. We must not proceed further 
in undressing him ; and if 1 conceal these under a loose 
morning gown of green damask, the insuperable periwig 
will still remain. 

Let me then present him to j'our imagination, setting 
forth on horseback in that sort of weather which no man 
encounters voluntarily, but which men of his profession who 



THE DOCTOR. 229 

practise in the country are called upon to face at all seasons 
and all hours. Look at him in a greatcoat of the closest 
texture that the looms of Leeds could furnish — one of those 
dreadnaughts the utility of which sets fashion at defiance. 
You will not observe his boot-stockings coming high above 
the knees ; the coat covers them ; and if it did not, you 
would be far from despising them now. His tie wig is all 
but hidden under a hat, the brim of which is broad enough 
to answer in some degree the use of an umbrella. Look at 
him now, about to set off on some case of emergency ; with 
haste in his expressive eyes, and a cast of thoughtful anxiety 
over one of the most benignant countenances that nature 
ever impressed with the characters of good humour and good 
sense ! 

Was he then so handsome ? you say. Nay, ladies, I know 
not whether you would have called him so : for among the 
things which were too wonderful for him, yea, which he 
knew not, I suspect that Solomon might have included a 
woman's notion of handsomeness in man. 



CHAPTER LVHL P. L 

CONCERNING THE PORTRAIT OF DR. DANIEL DOVE. 

The sure traveller, 
Though he alight sometimes, still goeth on. 

Hekbert. 

There is no portrait of Dr. Daniel Dove. 

And there Horrebow, the natural historian of Iceland — if 
Horrebow had been his biographer — would have ended this 
chapter. 

" Here, perchance," (observe, reader, I am speaking now 
in the words of the lord keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon,) " here, 
perchance, a question would be asked, (and yet I do marvel 
to hear a question made of so plain a matter,) what should 
be the cause of this ? If it were asked," (still the lord 
keeper speaketh,) " thus I mean to answer : That I think no 
man so blind but seeth it, no man so deaf but heareth it, nor 
no man so ignorant but understandeth it." '•'' 11 y a des de~ 
mandes si sottes qu'on ne les sqauroit resoudre par autre moyen 
que par la moquerie et les absurdities ; ajin qu'une sottise pousse 
Vautre:'* 

But some reader may ask what I have, answered here, or 

* Garasse 



230 THE DOCTOR. 

rather what I have brought forward the great authority of 
the lord keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon and the arch-vitup- 
erator P. Garasse, to answer for me. Do I take it for 
granted that the cause wherefore there is no portrait of Dr. 
Daniel Dove should be thus apparent ■? or the reason why, 
there being no such portrait, Horrebow should simply have 
said so, and having so said, end therewith the chapter which 
he had commenced upon the subject 1 

Oh, gentle reader, you who ask this pertinent question — I 
entirely agree with you ! there is nothing more desirable in 
composition than perspicuity ; and in perspicuity precision 
is implied. Of the author wlio has attained it in his style, it 
may indeed be said, omne tulit punctum, so far as relates to 
style ; for all other graces, those only excepted which only 
genius can impart, will necessarily follow. Nothing is 
so desirable, and yet it should seem that nothing is so 
difficult. He who thinks least about it when he is en- 
gaged in composition will be most likely to attain it, for 
no man ever attained it by labouring for it. Read all the 
treatises upon composition that ever were composed, and 
you vv^ill find nothing which conveys so much useful in- 
struction as the account given by John Wesley of his own 
way of writing. "1 never think of my style," says he; 
" but just set down the words that come first. Only when I 
transcribe anything for the press, then I think it my duty to 
see that every phrase be clear, pure, and proper : conciseness, 
which is now as it were natural to me, brings quantum sufficit 
of strength. If after all I observe any stiff expression, I 
throw it out neck and shoulders." Let your words take 
their course freely ; they will then dispose themselves in 
their natural order, and make your meaning plain ; that is, 
Mr. Author, supposing you have a meaning ; and that it is 
not an insidious, and for that reason, a covert one. With 
all the headwork that there is in these volumes, and all the 
heartwork too, I have not bitten my nails over a single 
sentence which they contain. I do not say that my hand 
has not sometimes been passed across my brow ; nor that 
the fingers of my loft hand have not played with the hair 
upon my forehead — like Thalaba's with the grass that grew 
beside Oneiza's tomb. 

No people have pretended to so much precision in their 
language as the Turks. They have not only verbs active, 
passive, transitive, and reciprocal, but also verbs co-opera- 
tive, verbs meditative, verbs frequentative, verbs negative, 
and verbs impossible ; and moreover they have what are 
called verbs of opinion, and verbs of knowledge. The latter 
are used when the speaker means it to be understood that he 
speaks of his own sure knowledge, and is absolutely certain 
of what he asserts ; the former when he advances it only 



THE DOCTOR. 231 

as what he thinks hkely, or believes upon the testimony of 
others. 

Now in the Turkish language the word whereon both the 
meaning and the construction of the sentence depend, is 
placed at the end of a sentence, which extends not unfre- 
quently to ten, fifteen, or twenty lines. What therefore they 
might gain in accuracy by this nice distinction of verbs must 
be more than counterbalanced by the ambiguity consequent 
upon long-windedness. And notwithstanding their conscien- 
tious moods, they are not more remarkable for veracity than 
their neighbours who in ancient times made so much use of 
the indefinite tenses, and were said to be always hars. 

We have a sect in our own country who profess to use a 
strict and sincere plainness of speech; they call their dialect 
the plain language, and yet they are notorious for making a 
studied precision in their words answer all the purposes of 
equivocation. 



SND or TOIm 1« 



THE DOCTOR, 



There is a kind of physiognomy in the titles of books no less than in 
the fiaces of men, by which a skilful observer will as well know what to 
expect from the one as the other. — Butler's Remains. 



THE DOCTOR, 



8rc. 




IN TWO VOLUMES. 
VOL. II. 



NEW-YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, 

1860. 



PRELUDE OF MOTTOES. 



"Ays vvv, ui — KapSia 
-etVoPff' orr' av ahrrji croi 6ok?}i, 



TdXiiTjtrov, Wi, xf^PT^ov, ayanaL Ka{)6ids. 

Aristophanes. 

ie vas de nouveau percer mon tonneau, et de la traicte, laquelle par 
deux precedents volumes vous est assez cogneue, vous tirer du creux de 
nos passetemps epicenaires un galant tiercin, et consecutivement un joy- 
eux quart de sentences PantagieuUiques. Par moy vous sera licite les 
appeller Diogeniques. Et peur n'ayez que le vin faille. Autant que vous 
en* tireray par la dille, autant en entonneray per le bondon. Ainsi de- 
mourera le tonneau inexpuisible. 11 a source vive et veine perpetuelle. 
— Rabelais. 

The wholesom'st meats that are will breed satiety 
Except we should admit of some variety. 

In music, notes must be some high, some base. 
And this I say, these pages have intendment. 

Still kept within the lists of good sobriety, 
To work in men's ill manners good amendment, 

Wherefore if any think the book unseasonable, 
Their stoic minds are foes to good society, 

And men of reason may think them unreasonable. 
It is an act of virtue and of piety, 

To warn men of their sins in any sort, 

In prose, in verse, in earnest, or in sport. 

Sir John H.irrinoton. 

The great cement that holds these several discourses together is one 
main design which they jointly drive at, and which, I think, is confessedly 
generous and important, namely, the knowledge of— true happiness, so far 
as reason can cut her way through those darknesses and difficulties she is 
encumbered with in this life : which though they be many and great, yet 
I should belie the sense of my own success, if 1 should pronounce them 
insuperable; as also, if I were deprived of that sense, should lose many 
pleasures and enjoyments of mind, which I am now conscious to myself 
of: among 'which there is none so considerable as that tacit reflection 
within myself, what real service may be rendered to religion by these my 
labours. — Henry- More. 



VIU PHELTJDE OF MOTTOES. 

Scribere fert animus multa et diversa, nee uno 
Gurgite versari semper ; quo flamina ducent 
IbJmus, et nunc has, nunc illas nabimus \mdas; 
Ardua nunc ponti, nunc liitora tuta petemus. 
Et quanquam interduin fretus ratione, latentes 
Naturae teutabo vias, atque abdita pandam, 
Praecipu^ tamen ilia sequar qusecunque videntur 
Prodesse, ac sanctos mortalibus addere mores, 
Heu penitus (liceat varum mihi dicere) nostjro 
Extinctos cevo. 

Palingenius. 

Ja n'est besoin (arnj^ lecteur !) t'escrire 
Par le menu le prouffit et plaisir 
Que recevras si ce livre veux lire, 
Et d'icelluy le sens prendre au desir ; 
Yeuille done prendre a le lire loisir, 
Et que ce soit avecq intelligence. 
Si tu le fais, propos de grand plaisance 
Tu y verras, et moult prouffiteras ; 
Et si tiendras en grand resjouissance 
Le tien esprit, el ton temps passeras. 

Jean Favre. 

" Gods me ! how now ! what present have we here ?" 

" A book, that stood in peril of the press ; 
But now it's past those pikes, and doth appear 

To keep the lookers-on from heavmess " 
" What stuff contains it f" " Fustian, perfect spruce, 

Wit's gallimalfry, or wit fried in steaks." 
" From whom came it, a God's name ?" " From his muse, 

(Oh do not tell !) that still your favour seeks." 
" And who is that?" " Truth that is I." " What I 

I per se I, great 1, you would say." " No ! 
Great I indeed you well may say ; but I 
Am httle i, the least of all the row." 

Davies of Hereford. 



Lector, esto libro te ofrezco, sin que me aya mandado senor alguno que 
i'e escriva, ni menos me ayan importunado mis amigos que le estampe, 
sino solamente por mi gusto, por mi antojo y por mi voluntad. — Montalvan. 

The reader must not expect in this work merely the private uninterest- 
ing history of a single person. He may expect whatever curious particu- 
lars can with any propriety be connected with it. Nor must the general 
disquisitions and the incidental narratives of the present work be ever con- 
sidered as actually digressionary in their natures, and as merely useful in 
their notices. They are all united with the rest, and form proper parts ol 
the whole. They have some of them a necessary connection with the his- 
tory of the doctor ; they have many of them an intimate relation, they 
have all of them a natural affinity to it. And the author has endeavoured 
by a judicious distribution of them through the work, to prevent that dis- 
gusting uniformity, and to take off that uninteresting personality, which 
must necessarily result from the merely barren and private annals of an 
obscure individual. He has thus in some measure adopted the elegant 
principles of modern gardening. He has thrown down the close hedges 
and the high walls that have confined so many biographers in their views 
He has called in the scenes of the neighbouring country to his aid, and has 
happily combined them into his own plan. He has drawn off the attention 



PRELUDE OF MOTTOES. IX 

from the central point before it became languid and exhausted, by fetching 
in some objects from society at large, or by presenting some view of the 
philosophy of man. But he has been cautious of multiplying objects in 
the wantonness of refinement, and of distracting the attention with a con- 
fused variety. He has always considered the history of the doctor as the 
great fixed point, the enlivening centre of all his excursions. Every open- 
ing is therefore made to carry an actual reference, either mediate or im- 
mediate, to the regular history of the doctor. And every visto is employed 
only for the useful purpose of breaking the stiff straight lines, of lighting 
op the dark, of heightening the little, and of colourmg over the Hfeless, in 
the regular history of the doctor.— Pre/ace to Whitaker's History of 
Manchester, mutatis mutandis. 

Chi tristezza da se cacciar desia, 
Legga quest' opra saporita e bella 

Bertoldo. 

I exhort all people, gentle and simple, men, women, and children, to 
buy, to read, to extol these labours of mine. Let them not fear to defend 
every article ; for I will bear them harmless. I have arguments good 
store, and can easily confute, either logically, theologically, or metaphys- 
ically, all those who oppose me. — Arbuthnot. 

Scripta legis passim quamplurima, lector, in orbe. 
Quae damni plus quam commoditatis habent. 

HoBc fugienda procul cum sint, sic ilia petenda, 
Jucunda utihbus quae bene juncta docent. 

P. RUBIGALLUS PaNNONIUS. 

Out of the old fieldes, as men saith, 
Cometh all this new corn fro' year to year ; 

And out of old bookes, in good faith, 
Cometh all this new science that men lere. 

Chaucbr. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER LIX. P. I.— p. 25. 

SHOWING WHAT THAT QUESTION WAS WHICH WAS ANSWERED 
BEFORE IT WAS ASKED. 

Chacun a son stile ; le mien, comme vouz voyez, n'est pas laconique.— 
Me. de Sevigne. 



CHAPTER I.X. P. I.— p. 20. 

SHOWING CAUSE WHY THE QUESTION WHICH WAS NOT ASKED 
OUGHT TO BE ANSWERED. 

Nay in troth 1 talk but coarsely, 
But I hold it cornfortable for the understanding. 

Beaumont and Fletchsr. 



CHAPTER LXI. P. I.— p. 29. 

WHEREIN THE QUESTION IS ANSWERED WHICH OUGHT TO HAVE 
BEEN ASKED. 

Ajutami, tu penna, et calamaio, 

Ch' io ho tra mano una materia asciutta. 

Mattio Franzesi. 



CHAPTER LXn. P. I.— p. 32. 

IN WHICH IS RELATED THE DISCOVERTT OF A CERTAIN PORTRAIT 
AT DONCASTER. 

Call in the barber ! If the tale be long 
He'll cut it short, I trust. 

MiDDLETON. 



XU CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER LXIIL P. I.— p. 34. 

A DISCUSSION CONCERNING THE QUESTION LAST PROPOSED. 

Questo e bene un de' piu profondi passi 
Che noi habbiamo ancora oggi tentato ; 
E non e mica da huomini bassi. 

Agnolo Firenzuola. 

CHAPTER LXIV. P. I.— p. 37. 

DEFENCE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING A SYSTEM OF MORAL COS- 
METICS RECOMMENDED TO THE LADIES GWILLIM SIR THOMAS 

LAWRENCE GEORGE WITHER APPLICATION TO THE SUBJECT 

OF THIS WORK. 

Pingitur in tabulis formae peritura venustas, 
Vivat ut in tabulis, quod perit in facie. 

Owen. 

CHAPTER LXV. P. I.— p. 40. 

SOCIETY OF A COUNTRY TOWN SUCH A TOWN A MORE FAVOUR- 
ABLE HABITAT FOR SUCH A PERSON AS DR. DOVE THAN LONDON 
WOULD HAVE BEEN. 

Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell ; 

Inn anywhere ; 

And seeing the snail, which everjrwhere doth roam, 

Carrying his ovvn home still, still is at home. 

Follow (for he is easy paced) this snail ; 

Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail. 

DOXNE. 

CHAPTER LXVI. P. I.— p. 44. 

MR. COPLEY OF NETHERHALL SOCIETY AT HIS HOUSE DRUMMOND 

BURGH GRAY MASON MILLER THE ORGANIST AND HISTO- 
RIAN OF DONCASTER HERSCHEL. 

All worldly joys go less 
To the one joy of doing kindnesses. 

Herbert. 



CHAPTER LXVH. P. I.— p. 46. 

A MYTHOLOGICAL STORY MORALIZED. 

II faut mettre les fables en presse pour en tirer quelque sue de verit6. 
-Garasse. 



CONTENTS. Xlll 



CHAPTER LXVIII. P. I.—p. 51. 

ECCENTRIC PERSONS, WHY APPARENTLY MORE COMMON IN ENG- 
LAND THAN IN OTHER COUNTRIES — HARRY BINGLEY. 

Bless'd are those 
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, 
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger 
To sound what stop she please. 

Hamlet. 



CHAPTER LXIX. P. I.—p. 56. 

A MUSICAL RECLUSE AND HIS SISTER. 

Some proverb maker, I forget who, says, " God hath given to some men 
vy sdom and understanding, and to others the art of playing on the fiddle." 
— Professor Fk^k's Dogmas of the Constitution. 



CHAPTER LXX. P. I.—p. 58. 

SHOWING THAT ANY HONEST OCCUPATION IS BETTER THAN NONE, 
BUT THAT OCCUPATIONS WHICH ARE DEEMED HONOURABLE ARE 
NOT ALWAYS HONEST. 

J'ai peine k concevoir pourquoi le plupart des hommes ont une si forte 
envie d'etre heureux, etune sigrande incapacite pour le devenir. — Voyages 
de Milord Ceton. 



CHAPTER LXXI. P. I.—p. 61. 

TRANSITION IN OUR NARRATIVE PREPARATORY TO A CHANGE IV 

THE doctor's life A SAD STORY SUPPRESSED THE AUTHOR 

PROTESTS AGAINST PLAYING WITH THE FEELINGS OF HIS READ- 
ERS ALL ARE NOT MERRY THAT SEEM MIRTHFUL THE SCAF- 
FOLD A STAGE DON RODRIGO CALDERON THISTLEWOOD THE 

WORLD A MASQUERADE, BUT THE DOCTOR ALWAYS IN HIS OWN 
CHARACTER. 

This breaks no rule of order. 

If order were infringed, then should I flee 

From my chief purpose, and my mark should miss. 

Order is nature's beauty, and the way 

To order is by rules that art hath found. 

GWILLIM. 

II* 



XIV CONTENTS 



CHAPTER LXXII. P. I.— p. 68. 

IN WHICH THE FOURTH OF THE QUESTIONS PROPOSED IN CHA.PTER 
II. P. I. IS BEGUN TO BE ANSWERED ; SOME OBSERVATIONS 
UPON ANCESTRY ARE INTRODUCED, AND THE READER IS IN- 
FORMED WHY THE AUTHOR DOES NOT WEAR A CAP AND BELLS. 

Boast not the titles of your ancestors, 

Brave youths ! they're their possessions, none of yours. 

When your own virtues equall'd have their names, 

'Twill be but fair to lean upon their fames. 

For they are strong supporters ; but till then 

The greatest are but growing gentlemen. 

Ben Jon SON. 

CHAPTER LXXni. P. I.— p. 70. 

BAvSH MARRIAGES— AN EARLY WIDOWHOOD AFFLICTION RENDERED 

A BLESSING TO THE SUFFERER ; AND TWO ORPHANS LEFT. 
THOUGH NOT DESTITUTE, YET FRIENDLESS. 

Love built a stately house ; where Fortune came, 

And spinning fancies, she was heard to say 
That her fine cobwebs did support the frame : 
Whereas they were supported by the same. 
But Wisdom quickly swept them all away. 

Herbert. 

CHAPTER LXXIV. P. I.— p. 73. 

h LADY DESCRIBED WHOSE SINGLE LIFE WAS NO BLESSEDNESS 

EIIHER TO HERSELF OR OTHERS A VERACIOUS EPITAPH AND 

AN APPROPRIATE MONUMENT. 

Beauty ! my lord — 'tis the worst part of woman! 
A weak poor thing, assaulted every hour 
By creeping minutes of defacing time ; 
A superficies which each breath of care 
Blasts off; and every humorous stream of grief 
Which flows from forth these fountains of our eyes 
Washeth away, as rain doth winter's snow. 

GOFF. 

CHAPTER LXXV. P. I.— p. 75. 

A SCENE WHICH WILL PUT SOME OF THOSE READERS WHO HAVE 
BEEN MOST IMPATIENT WITH THE AUTHOR, IN THE BEST HU- 
MOUR WITH HIM. 

There is no argument of more antiquity and elegancy than is the mattei 
of love ; for it seems to be as old as the world, and to bear date from the 
first time that man and woman was : therefore in this, as in the finest 
metal, the freshest wits have in all ages shown their best workmanship. 
— Robert Wilmot. 



CONTENTS. XV 



CHAPTER LXXVI. P. I.— p. 77. 

A STORY CONCERNING CUPID, WHICH NOT ONE READER IN TEN 
THOUSAND HAS EVER HEARD BEFORE ; A DEFENCE OF I.OVE, 
WHICH WILL BE VERY SATISFACTORY TO THE LADIES. 

They do lie, 
Lie grossly who say love is blind— by him 
And Heaven they lie ! he has a sight can pierce 
Through ivory, as clear as it were horn, 
And reach its object. 

Beaumont .»*»d Fletcher. 



CHAPTER LXXVH. P. I.— p. 81. 

MORE CONCERNING LOVE AND THE DREAM OF LIFE. 

Happy the bonds that hold ye ; 
Sure they be sweeter far than liberty. 
There is no blessedness but in such bondage ; 
Happy that happy chain ; such links are heavenly. 

Beaumont and Fletcher. 



INTERCHAPTER VH.— p. 84. 

OBSOLETE ANTICIPATIONS ; BEING A LEAF OUT OF AN OLD ALMA- 
NAC, WHICH, LIKE OTHER OLD ALMANACS, THOUGH OUT OF 
DATE IS NOT OUT OF USE. 



You play before me, I shall often look on you, 
I give you that warning beforehand. 
Take it not ill, my masters, 1 shall laugh at you. 
And truly when I am least offended with you ; 
It is my humour. 

MiDDLETON. 



INTERCHAPTER VHI.— p. 



A LEAF OUT OF THE NEW ALMANAC THE AUTHOR THINKS CONSID- 
ERATELY OF HIS COMMENTATORS ; RUMINATES ; RELATES AN 
ANECDOTE OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE ; QUOTES SOME PYRA- 
MIDAL STANZAS, WHICH ARE NOT THE WORSE FOR THEIR AR- 
CHITECTURE, AND DELIVERS AN OPINION CONCERNING BURNS. 

To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body ; no less 
are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul. " Earth thou art, in earth 
thou shah return.''^ — Fuller. 



XVI CONTENTS. 



INTERCHAPTER IX.— p. 92. 

AN ILLUSTRATION FOR THE ASSISTANCE OF THE COiMiMENTATORS 
DRAWN FROM THE HISTORY OF THE KORAN — REMARKS WHICH 
ARE NOT INTENDED FOR MUSSULMEN, AND WHICH THE MIS- 
SIONARIES IN THE .MEDITERRANEAN ARE ADVISED NOT TO 
TRANSLATE. 

You will excuse me if I do not strictly confine mj'self to narration, but 
now and then intersperse such reflections as may offer while I am wri- 
ting. — John Newton. 



INTERCHAPTER X.— p. 95. 

MORE ON THE FOREGOING SUBJECT — ELUCIDATION FR03I HENRY 

MORE AND ER. WATTS AN INCIDENTAL OPINION UPON HORACE 

WALPOLE THE STREAM OF THOUGHT ' FLOWETH AT ITS OWN 

SWEET will'' PICTURES AND BOOKS A SAVING OF MR. PITT's 

CONCERNING WILBERFORCE THE AUTHOR EXPLAINS IN WHAT 

SENSE IT MIGHT BE SAID THAT HE SOMETIMES SHOOTS WITH 
A LONG BOV/. 

Vorrei, disse il Signer Gasparo Pallavicino, che voi ragionassi un poco 
piu minutamente di questo, che non fate ; che in vero vi tenete molto al 
generale, et quasi ci mostrate le cose per transito. — Il Cortegiano. 



CHAPTER LXXVIII. P. I.— p. 101. 

AMATORY POETRY NOT ALWAYS OF THE WISEST KIND AN AT- 
TEMPT TO CONVEY SOME NOTION OF ITS QUANTITY TRUE 

LOVE, THOUGH NOT IN EVERY CASE THE BEST POET, THE 
BEST MORALIST ALWAYS. 

El amor es tan ingenioso, que en mi opinion, mas poeta* ha hecho el 
BOiO, que la misma naluraleza. — Perez de Montalvan. 



CHAPTER LXXIX. P. L— p. 106. 

AN EARLY BEREAVEMENT TRUE LOVE ITS OWN COMFORTER- 
LONELY FATHER AND AN ONLY CHILD. 

Read ye that run the awful truth, 

With which I charge my page : 
A worm is in the bud of youth. 

And at the root of age. 

Cov/PER. 



CONTENTS. XVll 



CHAPTER LXXX. P. I.— p. 108. 

OBSERVATIONS WHICH SHOW THAT WHATEVER PRIDE MEN MAY 
TAKE IN THE APPELLATIONS THEY ACQUIRE IN THEIR PRO- 
GRESS THROUGH THE WORLD, THEIR DEAREST NAME DIES BEFORE 
THEM. 



Thus they who reach 
Gray hairs, die piecemeal. 

SOUTHEY. 



CHAPTER LXXXI. P. I.— p. 110. 

A QUESTION WHETHER LOVE SHOULD BE FAITHFUL TO THE DEAD- 
DOUBTS ADVANCED AND CASES STATED. 

Oh even in spite of death, yet still my choice, 
Oft with the inward all-beholdmg eye 
I think. 1 see thee, and I hear thy voice ! 

Lord Sterline. 



CHAPTER LXXXn. P. I.— p. 112. 

THE DOCTOR IS INTRODUCED, BY THE SMALLPOX, TO HIS FUTURE 
WIFE. 

Long-waiting love doth entrance find 
Into the slow-believing mind. 

Sydney Godolphin. 



CHAPTER LXXXHL P. I.— p. 114. 

THE AUTHOR REQUESTS THE READER NOT TO BE IMPATIENT 

SHOWS FRORI LORD SHAFTESBURY AT WHAT RATE A JUDICIOUS 
WRITER OUGHT TO PROCEED — DISCLAIMS PROLIXITY FOR HIM- 
SELF, AND GIVES EXAMPLES OF IT IN A GERMAN PROFESSOR, 
A JEWISH RABBI, AND TWO COUNSELLORS, ENGLISH AND AMER- 
ICAN. 

Band. He that will have a cake out of the wheat, must tarry th') 
grinding. 

Troilus. Have I not tarried ? 

Pand. Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting. 

Troilus. Have I not tarried ? 

Pand. Ay, the bolting ; but you must tarry the leavening. 

Troilus. Still have I tarried. 

Pand. Ay, to the leavening : but here's yet in the word herea\1er, the 
kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven, and the baking • 
nay, you must stay the cooling too, or you may chance to burn your li|tt 
^-Troilus and Cressida. 



XVlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER LXXXIV. P. I.— p. 117. 

A LOOP DROPPED IN THE FOREGOING CHAPTER IS HERE TAKEN UP. 

Enobarbus. - Every time 

Serves for the matter that is then born in it. 

Lepidus. But small to greater matters must give way. 
Enobarbus. Not if the small come first. 

Shakspeare. 

CHAPTER LXXXV. P. I.— p. 118. 

THE doctor's contemporaries AT LEYDEN — EARLY FRIENDSHIP 
— COWPER's MELANCHOLY OBSERVATION THAT GOOD DISPOSI- 
TIONS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE CORRUPTED THAN EVIL ONES 

TO BE CORRECTED YOUTHFUL CONNECTIONS LOOSENED IN THE 

COMMON COURSE OF THINGS A FINE FRAGMENT BY Vt^ALTER 

LaNDOR. 

Lass mich den Stunde gedenken, und jedes kieineren unstands. 

Ach, wer ruft nieht so gem unwiederbringliches an ! 
Jenes siisse Gedrange der leichtesten irdischen Tage, 

Ach, wer schatzt ihn genug, diesen vereilenden VVerth ! 
Klein ercheinet es nun, doch ach ! nicht klemlich dem Herzen ; 

Macht die Liebe, die Kunst, jegliches Kleine doch gross. 

Goethe. 

CHAPTER LXXXVI. P. I.— p. 123. 

PETER HOPKINS — REASONS FOR SUPPOSING THAT HE WAS AS 
GOOD A PRACTITIONER AS ANY IN ENGLAND ; THOUGH NOT THE 

BEST THE FITTEST MASTER FOR DANIEL DOVE HIS SKILL IN 

ASTROLOGY. 

Que sea Medico mas grave 
Quien mas aforismos sabe, 

Bien puede ser. 
Mas que no sea mas experto 
El que mas huviere muerto, 

No peude ser. 

GONGORA. 



CHAPTER LXXXVn. P. I.— p. 128. 

ASTROLOGY ALMANACS — PRISCILLIANISM RETAINED IN THEM TO 

THIS TIME. 

I wander 'tween the poles 
And heavenly hinges, 'mong eccentricals, 
Centres, conceatrics, circles, and epicycles. 

Albumazar. 



CONTENTS. XIX 



CHAPTER LXXXVIII. P. I.— p. 131. 

AN INCIDENT WHICH BRINGS THE AUTHOR INTO A FORTUITOUS 
RESEMBLANCE WITH THE PATRIARCH OF THE PREDICANT FRI- 
ARS DIFFERENCES BETWEEN IHE FACT AND THE FABLE ; AND 

AN APPLICATION WHICH, UNLIKE THOSE THAT ARE USUALLY 
APPENDED TO ESOP's FABLES. THE READER IS LIKELY NEITHER 
TO SKIP NOR TO FORGET. 

Dire aqui una maldad grande del Demonic. 

Pedro de Cieca. de Leon. 



CHAPTER LXXXIX. P. I.— p. 133. 

A. CHAPTER CHARACTERISTIC OF FRENCH ANTIQUARIES, FRENCH 
LADIES, FRENCH LAWYERS, FRENCH JUDGES, FRENCH LITERA- 
TURE, AND FRENCHNESS IN GENERAL. 

Quid de pulicibus? vitse salientia puncta.— Cowley. 



CHAPTER XC. P. 1.— p. 141. 

WHEREIN THE CURIOUS READER MAY FIND SOME THINGS WHICH 
HE IS NOT LOOKING FOR, AND WHICH THE INCURIOUS ONE 
MAY SKIP IF HE PLEASES. 

Voulant doncques satisfaire a la curiosite de touts bons compagnons, j'ay 
revolve toutes les Pantarches des Cieux, calcule les quadrats de la Lune, 
crochete tout ce que jamais penserent touts les Astrophiles, Hypemephe- 
listes, Anemophylaces, Uranopetes, et Ombrophores. — Rabelais. 



CHAPTER XCI. P. I.-p. 146. 

THE AUTHOR DISPLAYS A LITTLE MORE OF SUCH READING AS IS 
SELDOM READ, AND SHOWS THAT LORD BVRON AND AN ESSEX 
WIDOW DIFFERED IN OPINION CONCERNING FRIDAY. 

Si j'avois disperse cecien divers endroits de mon ouvrage, j'aurois evite 
la censure de ceux qui appelleront ce chapitre un fatras de petit recueils. 
Mais comme je cherche la commodite de rnes lecteurs plutot que la mi- 
enne, je veux bien au depens de cette censure, leur epargner la peine do 
rassembler ce que j'aurois disperse. — Bayle. 



XX CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XCII. P. I.— p. 152. 

CONCERNING PETER HOPKINS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOON 

AND TIDES UPON THE HUMAN BODY A CHAPTER WHICH SOME 

PERSONS MAY DEEM MORE CURIOUS THAN DULL, AND OTHERS 
MORE DULL THAN CURIOUS. 

A man that travelleth to the most desirable home, hath a habit of desire to 
it all the way ; but his present business is his travel ; and horse, and com- 
pany, and inns, and ways, and weariness, «fec., may take up more of his 
sensible thoughts, and of his talk and action, than his home. — Baxter. 



CHAPTER XCni. P. I.— p. 157. 

REMARKS OF AN IMPATIENT READER ANTICIPATED AND ANSWERED. 

'^i2 TzoWd \ilas apri Kavovrjr'' e-rj, 
Oil nvrjfioveveis ovk€t' ov6h'. 

Sophocles. 

CHAPTER XCIV. P. I.— p. 162. 

THE AUTHOR DISCOVERS CERTAIN MUSICAL CORRESPONDENCES TO 
THESE HIS LUCUBRATIONS. 

And music mild I learn'd, that tells 
Tune, time, and measure of the song. 

HiGGINS. 

CHAPTER XCV. P. I.— p. 165. 

WHEREIN MENTION IS MADE OF LORD BYRON, RONSARD, RABBI 

KAPOL, AND CO. IT IS SUGGESTED THAT A MODE OF READING 

THE STARS HAS BEEN APPLIED TO THE RECOVERY OF OB- 
LITERATED ROMAN INSCRIPTIONS ; AND IT IS SHOWN THAT A 
MATHEMATICIAN MAY REASON MATHEMATICALLY, AND YET 
LIKE A FOOL. 

Thus may ye behold 
This man is very bold. 
And in his learning old 
Intendeth for to sit. 
I blame him not a whit ; 
For It would vex his wit, 
And clean against his earning 
To follow such learning 
As nowadays is taught. 

Doctor Double-Alb. 



CONTENTS. XXI 



CHAPTER XCVI. P. I.— p. 169. 

A musician's wish excited by HERSCHEL's telescope SYM- 
PATHY BETWEEN peter HOPKINS AND HIS PUPIL INDIFFER- 

ENTISM USEFUL IN ORDINARY CASES, BUT DANGEROUS IN RE- 
LIGION. 

Noi intendiamo parlare alle cose che utili sono alia umana vita, quanto 
per nostro intendimento si potra in questa parte comprendere ; e sopra 
quelle particelle che detto avemo di comporre. — Bdsone da Gubbio. 



CHAPTER XCVn. P. I.— p. 173. 

MR. bacon's PARSONAGE CHRISTIAN RESIGNATION — TIME AND 

CHANGE — WILKIE AND THE MONK IN THE ESCURIAL. 

The idea of her life shall sweetly creep 

Into his study of imagination ; 

And every lovely organ of her life 

Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit, 

More moving delicate, and full of life, 

Into the eye and prospect of his soul, 

Than when she hved indeed. 

Shakspeare. 



CHAPTER XCVni. P. I.— p. 177. 

CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION OPINIONS CONCERNING THE SPIRITS Of 

THE DEAD. 

The voice which I did more esteem 

Than music in her sweetest key ; 
Those eyes which unto me did seem 

More comfortable than the day ; 
Those now by me, as they have been, 
Shall never more be heard, or seen ; 
But what I once enjoyed in them, 
Shall seem hereafter as a dream. 

All earthly comforts vanish thus ; 

So little hold of them have we, 
That we from them, or they from U'", 

May in a moment ravished be. 
Yet we are neither just nor wise, 
If present mercies we despise ; 
Or mind not how there may be made 
A thankful use of what we had. 

WiTHBR. 



XXU CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XCIX. P. I.— p. 181. 

A COUNTRY PARISH — SOME WHOLESOME EXTRACTS, SOME TRUE 
ANECDOTES, AND SOME USEFUL HINTS, WHICH WILL NOT BE 
TAKEN BY THOSE WHO NEED THEM MOST. 

Non e inconveniente, che de]]e cose delettabili alcune ne sieno utili, cosi 
come deir uliii moke ne sono delettabili, et in tutte due alcune si truo- 
rvano honeste. — Leone Medico (Hebeeo.) 



CHAPTER C. P. I.— p. 185. 

SHOWING HOW THE VICAR DEALT WITH THE JUVENILE PART OF 
HIS flock; and how he WAS OF OPINION THAT THE MORE 
PLEASANT THE WAY IN WHICH CHILDREN ARE TRAINED UP TO 
GO CAN BE MADE FOR THEM, THE LESS LIKELY THEY WILL 
BE TO DEPART FROM IT. 

Sweet were the sauce would please each kind of taste, 
The life, likewise, were pure that never swerved ; 

For spiteful tongues, in cankered stomachs placed, 
Deem worst of things which best, percase, deserved. 

But what for that? This med'cine may suffice, 

To scorn the rest, and seek to please the wise. 

Sir Walter Raleigh. 



CHAPTER CI. P. L— p. 188. 

SOME ACCOUNT OF A RETIRED TOBACCONIST AND HIS FAMILY. 

Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem. 

Horace. 

INTERCHAPTER XL— p. 191. 

A.DVICE TO CERTAIN READERS INTENDED TO ASSIST THEIR DIGES- 
TION OF THESE VOLUMES. 

Take this in good part, whatsoever thou be. 
And wish me no worse than I wish unto thee. 

TUSSEP 



CONTENTS. XXlll 

CHAPTER CII. P. I.— p. 180. 

MORE CONCERNING THE AFORESAID TOBACCONIST. 

I doubt nothing at all but that you shall like the man every day better 
than other ; for verily I think he lacketh not of those qualities which should 
become any honest man to have, over and besides the gift of nature where- 
with God hath above the common rate endued him. — Archbishop Cran 

HER. 

CHAPTER CHI. P. I.— p. 199. 

a few particulars concerning no. 113 bishopsgate-street- 
within; and of the family at thaxted grange. 

Opinion is the rate of things, 

From hence our peace doth flow ; 
I have a better fate than kings, 

Because I think it so. 

Catharine Philips. 

CHAPTER CIV. P. I.— p. 204. 

A. REMARKABLE EXAMPLE, SHOWING THAT A WISE MAN, WHEN 
HE RISES IN THE MORNING, LITTLE KNOWS WHAT HE MAY DO 
BEFORE NIGHT. 

Now I love, 
And so as in so short a time I may ; 
Yet so as time shall never break that so, 
And therefore so accept of Elinor. 

Robert Greene. 



CHAPTER CV. P. I.— p. 208. 

A. WORD OF NOBS, AND AN ALLUSION TO C^SAR SOME CIRCUM- 
STANCES RELATING TO THE DOCTOR's SECOND LOVE, WHEREBY 
THOSE OF HIS THIRD AND LAST ARE ACCOUNTED FOR. 

Un mal que se entra por medio los ojos, 
Y va se derecho hasta el corazon ; 
Alii en ser llegado se torna aficion, 
Y da mil pesares, plazeres y enojos : 
Causa alegrias, tristezas, antojos ; 
Haze Uorar, y haze reir. 
Haze cantar, y haze planir, 
Dapensamientos dos mil amanojos. 

Question de Amor. 



XXIV CONTENTS 



INTERCHAPTER XII.— p. 213. 

r^E AUTHOR REGRETS THAT HE CANNOT MAKE HIMSELF KNOWN 
TO CERTAIN READERS ; STATES THE POSSIBLE REASONS FOR 
HIS SECRESY ; MAKES NO USE IN SO DOING OF THE LICENSE 
WHICH HE SEEMS TO TAKE OUT IN HIS MOTTO ; AND STATING 
THE PRETENCES WHICH HE ADVANCES FOR HIS WORK, DISCLAIM- 
ING THE WHILE ALL MERIT FOR HIMSELF, MODESTLY PRESENTS 
THEM UNDER A GRECIAN VEIL. 

"Evd-a yap tl ^a \ptvhos \tYt(j^ai Xs/fo-^^oj. 

Herodotus. 



INTERCHAPTER XIII.— p. 217. 

A PEEP FROM BEHIND THE CURTAIN. 

Ha, ha, ha, now ye will make me to smile, 

To see if I can all men beguile. 

Ha, my name, my name would ye so fain know ? 

Yes, I wis, shall ye, and that with all speed. 
I have forgot it, therefore 1 cannot show. 

A, a, now I have it ! I have it indeed ! 
My name is Ambidexter, I .signify one 
That with both hands finely can play. 

King Cambyse$ 



THE DOCTOR, 

CHAPTER LIX. P. I. 

SHOWING WHAT THAT QUESTION WAS WHICH WAS ANSWERED 
BEFORE IT WAS ASKED. 

Chacun a son stile ; le mien, comine vouz voyez, n'est pas laconique. — 
Me, de Sevigne. 

In reporting progress upon the subject of the preceding 
chapter, it appears that the question asked concerning the 
question that was answered, was not itself answered in that 
chapter; so that it still remains to be explained what it was 
that was so obvious as to require no other answer than the 
answer that was there given ; whether it was the reason why 
there is no portrait of Dr. Daniel Dove, or the reason why 
Horrebow, if he had been the author of* this book, would 
simply have said that there was none, and have said nothing 
more about it. 

The question which was answered related to Horrebow. 
He would have said nothing more about the matter, because 
he would have thought there was nothing more to say; or 
because he agreed with Britain's old rhyming Remembrancer, 
that although 

*' More might be said hereof to make a proof, 
Yet more to say were more than is enough." 

But if there be readers who admire a style of such barren 
brevity, I must tell them in the words of Estienne Pasquier 
that je fais grande conscience d' alamhiquer mon esprit en telle 
esfece d'escrite pour leur complaire. Do they take me for a 
bottle conjurer that 1 am to compress myself into a quart, 
wine merchants' measure, and be corked down? I must 
have " ample room and verge enough" — a large canvass 
such as Haydon requires, and as Rubens required before 



26 THE DOCTOR. 

him. When I pour out nectar for my guests it must be into 

"a bowl 
Large as my capacious soul." 

It is true I might have contented myself with merely say- 
ing there is no portrait of my venerable friend ; and the 
benevolent reader w^ould have been satisfied with the infor- 
mation, while at the same time he wished there had been 
one, and perhaps involuntarily sighed at thinking there was 
not. But I have duties to perform ; first, to the memory of 
my most dear philosopher and friend; secondly, to myself; 
thirdly, to posterity, which in this matter I cannot conscien- 
tiously prefer either to myself or my friend ; fourthly, to the 
benevolent reader who delighteth in this book, and conse- 
quently loveth me therefore, and whom therefore I love, 
though, notwithstanding here is love for love between us, we 
know not each other now, and never shall ! fourthly, I say to 
the benevolent reader, or rather readers, utriusque generis ; 
and fifthly, to the public for the time being. " England ex- 
pects every man to do his duty;" and England's expectation 
would not be disappointed if every Englishman were to per- 
form his as faithfully and fully as I will do mine. Mark me, 
reader, it is only of my duties to England, and to the parties 
above mentioned that I speak ; other duties I am accountable 
for elsewhere. God forbid that I should ever speak of them 
in this strain, or ever think of them otherwise than in hu- 
mility and fear ' 



CHAPTER LX. P. I. 

SHOWING CAUSE WHY THE QUESTION WHICH WAS NOT ASKED 
OUGHT TO BE ANSWERED. 

Nay in troth I talk but coarsely, 
But I hold it comfortable for the understanding. 

Beaumont and Fletcher. 

" What, more buffoonery !" says the honourable Fastidious 
Feeblewit, who condescends to act occasionally as small 
critic to the court journal — " what, still more of this buf- 
foonery !" 

" Yes, sir — vous ne recevrez de moy, siir le commencement 
ei milieu de celuy-cy mien chapitre que hovffonnerie ; et toutes- 
fois botiff'onnerie qui porte quant a soy une philosophie et con- 
templation generate de la vaniie de ce m^nde.''''* 

* Posquier. 



THE DOCTOR. 27 

" More absurdities still !" says Lord Makemotion Gander- 
man — " more and more absurdities !" 

" Ay, my lord !" as the Gracioso says in one of Calderon's 
plays — 

" I sino digo lo que quiero 
de que me sirve ser loco f " 

" Ay, my lord !" as the old Spaniard says in his national 
poesy, " Mas, y mas, y mas, y mas,'''' more, and more, and 
more, and more. You may live to learn what vaunted max- 
ims of your poUtical philosophy are nothing- else than absurd- 
ities in masquerade ; what old and exploded follies there 
are, which, with a little vamping and varnishing, pass for new 
and wonderful discoveries ; 

What a world of businesses 
Which by interpretation are mere nothings !* 

This you may live to learn. As for my absurdities, they 
may seem very much beneath your sapience ; but when I 
say h(B nug(E. seria ducunt, (for a trite quotation when well 
set is as good as one that will be new to everybody,) let me 
add, my lord, that it will be well both for you and your coun- 
try, if your practical absurdities do not draw after them con- 
sequences of a very different die ! 
No, my lord, as well as ay, my lord 

Never made man of woman born 
Of a bullock's tail, a blowing horn ; 
Nor can an ass's hide disguise 
A lion, if he ramp and rise.f 

" More fooling," exclaims Dr. Dense : he takes off his 
spectacles, lays them on the table beside him, with a look 
of despair, and applies to the snuffbox for consolation. It 
is a capacious box, and the doctor's servant takes care that 
his master shall never find in it a deficiency of the best rap- 
pee. " More fooling !" says that worthy doctor. 

Fooling, say you, my learned Dr. Dense 1 Chiabrera will 
tell you — 

" che non e ria 
Una gentil folUa," 

my erudite and good doctor ; 

But do you know what fooling is? true fooling — 
The circumstances that belong unto it ? 
For every idle knave that shows his teeth. 
Wants, and would live, can juggle, tumble, fiddle, 
Make a dog face, or can abuse his fellow, 
Is not a fool at furst dash.J 

:aumont and Fletcher. t Peele. i Beaumont and Fletcher. 



28 THE DOCTOR. 

It is easy to talk of fooling and of folly, 7nais cfen savoir 
les ordres, les rangs, les distinctions ; de connoitre ces differences 
delicaies qu'il y a de folie a folie ; les cifflnites et les alliances 
qui se trouvent entre la sagesse et cette meme folie^ as Saint 
Evremond says ; to know this is not under every one's 
nightcap; and perhaps my learned doctor may not be under 
your wig, orthodox and in full buckle as it is. 

The doctor is all astonishment, and almost begins to doubt 
whether 1 am fooling in earnest. Ay, doctor ! you meet in 
this world with false mirth as often as with false gravity : 
the grinning hypocrite is not a more uncommon character 
than the groaning one. As much light discourse comes from 
a heavy heart as from a hollow one ; and from a full mind 
as from an empty head. "Levity," says Mr. Danby, "is 
sometimes a refuge from the gloom of seriousness. A man 
may whistle ' for want of thought,' or from having too much 
of it." 

" Poor creature !" says the Reverend Philocalvin Frybabe. 
" Poor creature ! little does he think what an account he 
must one day render for every idle word !" 

And what account, odious man. if thou art a hypocrite, 
and hardly less odious if thou art sincere in thine abomina- 
ble creed, what account wilt thou render for thine extem- 
pore prayers and thy set discourses % My words, idle as 
thou mayst deem them, will never stupify the intellect, nor 
harden the heart, nor besot the conscience like an opiate 
drug ! 

" Such facetiousness," saith Barrow, " is not unreasonable 
or unlawful which ministereth harmless divertisement and 
delight to conversation ; harmless, I say, that is not intrench- 
ing upon piety, not infringing charity or justice, not disturb- 
ing peace. For Christianity is not so tetrical, so harsh, so 
envious as to bar us continually from innocent, much less 
from wholesome and useful pleasure, such as human hfe doth 
need or require. And if jocular discourse may serve to good 
purposes of this kind ; if it may be apt to raise our drooping 
spirits, to allay our irksome cares, to whet our blunted in- 
dustry, to recreate our minds, being tired and cloyed with 
graver occupations ; if it may breed alacrity, or maintam 
good humour among us ; if it may conduce to sweeten con- 
versation and endear society, then is it not inconvenient, oi 
unprofitable. If for those ends we may use other recrea- 
tions, employing on them our ears and eyes, our hands and 
feet, our other instruments of sense and motion ; why may 
we not as well to them accommodate our organs of speech 
and interior sense % Why should those games which excite 
our wit and fancies be less reasonable than those whereby 
our grosser parts and faculties are exercised ? yea, why are 
not those more reasonable, since they are performed in a 
manly way, and have in them a smack of reason ; seeing also 



THE DOCTOR. * 29 

they may be so managed, as not only to divert and please, 
but to improve and profit the mind, rousing and quickening it, 
yea, sometimes enlightening and instructing it, by good sense 
conveyed in jocular expression." 

But think, not that ni thus producing the authority of one of 
the wisest and best of men, 1 offer any apology for my lev- 
ities to your gravityships ! they need it not and you deserve 
*t not. 

Questi — 

Son fatti per dar pasto a gl' ignoranti : 
Ma voi ch' avete gl' intellelti sani, 
Mirale la dottrina che s'asconde 
Sotto queste coperte alte e profonde. 

Le cose belle, e preziose, e care, 
Saporite, soavi e dilicate, 
Scoperte in man non si debbon portare 
Perche da' porci non sieno imbrattate.* 

Gentlemen, you have made me break the word of prom 
ise both to the eye and ear. I began this chapter with 
the intention of showing to the reader's entire satisfac- 
tion, why the question which was not asked ought to be 
answered ; and now another chapter must be appropriated 
to that matter! Many things happen L.fJv.een the cup and 
the lip, and between the beginning of a chapter and the con- 
clusion thereof. 



CHAPTER LXI. P. I. 

WHEREIN THE QUESTION IS ANSWERED WHICH OUGHT TO HAVB 
BEEN ASKED. 

Ajutami, tu penna, et calamaio, 

Ch' io ho tra mano una materia asciutta. 

Mattio Franzesi. 

Wherefore there is no portrait of my excellent friend, is a 
question which ought to be answered, because the solution 
will exhibit something of wbRt in the words of the old dnnk- 
ing song he used to call liis '• poor way of thinking." And 
it is a question which may well be asked, seeing that in the 
circle wherein he moved there were some persons of liberal 
habits and feelings as well as liberal fortune, who enjoyed 
his peculiarities, pl"aced the fullest reliance upon his profes- 
sional skill, appreciated most highly his moral and intellec- 

* Orlando Innamorato. 
12 



30 THE DOCTOR. 

tual character, and were indeed personally attached to him 
in no ordinary degree. 

For another reason also ought this question to be resolved ; 
a reason which, whatever the reader may think, has the more 
weight with me, because it nearly concerns myself. " There 
is indeed," says the philosopher of Bemerton, " a near rela- 
tion between seriousness and wisdom, and one is a most excel- 
lent friend to the other. A man of a serious, sedate, and 
considerate temper, as he is always in a ready disposition 
for meditation, (the best improvement both of knowledge 
and manners,) so he thinks without disturbance, enters not 
upon another notion till he is master of the first, and so 
makes clean work with it: whereas a man of a loose, vola- 
tile, and shattered humour, thinks only by fits and starts, 
now and then in a morning interval, when the serious mood 
comes upon him ; and even then too, let but the least trifle 
cross his way, and his desultorious fancy presentl}' takes 
the scent, leaves the unfinished and half-mangled notion, 
and skips away in pursuit of the new game." Reader, it 
must be my care not to come under this condemnation ; and 
therefore I must follow to the end the subject which is be- 
fore me : " Quare autem nobis — dicendum videtur, ne temere 
secuti putemur; et breviter dicendum, ne in hujusmodi rebus 
diutius, quam ratio praecipiendi postulet commoremur."* 

Mr. Copley of Netherhall was particularly desirous of 
possessing this likeness so much desiderated by us now, and 
would have invited an artist from London, if the doctor 
could have been prevailed upon to sit for it ; but to this no 
persuasions could induce him. He never assigned a reason 
for this determination, and indeed always evaded the subject 
when it was introduced, letting it at the same time plainly be 
perceived that he was averse to it, and wished not to be so 
pressed as to draw from him a direct refusal. But once 
when the desire had been urged with some seriousness, he 
replied that he was the last of his race, and if he were to be 
the first who had his portrait taken, well might they who 
looked at it, exclaim with Solomon, " Vanity of vanities !" 

In that thought indeed it was that the root of his objection 
lay. " Pauli in domo, prczter se nemo superest,'''' is one of the 
most melancholy reflections to which Paulus jEmilius gave 
utterance in that speech of his which is recorded by Livy. 
The speedy extinction of his family in his own person was 
often in the doctor's mind ; and he would sometimes touch 
upon it when, in his moods of autumnal feeling, he was con- 
versing with those persons whom he had received into his 
heart of hearts. Unworthy as I was, it was my privilege 
and happiness to be one of them ; and at such times his 
deepest feelings could not have been expressed more un- 

* Cicero. 



THE DOCTOR. 31 

reser''edly, if he had given them utterance in poetry or in 
prayer. 

Blessed as he had been in all other things to the extent of 
his wishes, it would be unreasonable in him, he said, to look 
upon this as a misfortune ; so to repine would indicate little 
sense of gratitude to that bountiful Providence which had 
so eminently favoured him ; little also of rehgious acquies- 
cence in its will. It was not by any sore calamity nor 
series of afflictions that the extinction of his family had 
been brought on ; the diminution had been gradual, as if to 
show that their uses upon earth were done. His grand- 
father had only had two children ; his parents but one, and 
that one was now ultimus suorum. They had ever been a 
family in good repute, walking inoffensively towards all 
men, uprightly with their neighbours, and humbly with their 
God ; and perhaps this extinction was their reward. For 
what Solon said of individuals, that no one could truly be 
called happy till his life had terminated in a happy death, 
holds equally true of families. 

Perhaps, too, this timely extinction was ordained in mer- 
cy, to avert the consequences which might else so probably 
have arisen from his forsaking the station in which he was 
born ; a lowly but safe station, exposed to fewer dangers, 
trials, or temptations, than any other in this age or country, 
with which he was able to compare it. The sentiment with 
which Sanazzaro concludes his Arcadia was often in his mind, 
not as derived from that famous author, but self-originated : 
" Per cosa vera ed indubitata tener ti puoi, che chi piu di nas- 
coso e piu lontano dalla moltitudine vive, miglior vive ; e colui 
tra mortali si puo con piu verita chiamar beato, che senza invi- 
dia delle altrui grandezze, con modesto animo della sua fortu- 
nasi contenta." His father had removed him from that sta- 
tion ; he would not say unwisely, for his father was a wise 
and good man, if ever man deserved to be so called ; and he 
could not say unhappily ; for assuredly he knew that all the 
blessings which had earnestly been prayed for, had attended 
the determination. Through that blessing he had obtained 
the whole benefit which his father desired for him, and had 
escaped evils which, perhaps, had not been fully apprehended. 
His intellectual part had received all the improvement of 
which it was capable, and his moral nature had sustained no 
injury in the process; nor had his faith been shnken, but 
stood firm, resting upon a sure foundation. But the entail 
of humble safety had been, as it were, cutoff; the birthright 
— so to speak — had been renounced. His children, if God 
had given him children, must have mingled in the world, 
there to shape for themselves their lot of good or evil ; and 
he knew enough of the world to know how manifold and how 
insidious are the dangers which, in all its paths, beset us. 
He never could have been to them what his father had been 



32 THE DOCTOR. 

to him— that was impossible. They could have had none of 
those hallowing influences both of society and solitude to act 
upon them, which had imbued his heart betimes, and im- 
pressed upon his youthful mind a character that no after cir- 
cumstances could corrupt. They must inevitably have been 
exposed to more danger, and could not have been so well 
armed against it. That consideration reconciled him to being 
childless. God, who knew what was best for him, had or- 
dained that it should be so ; and he did not, and ought not to 
regret, that having been the most cultivated of his race, and 
so far the happiest, it was decreed that he should be the last. 
God's will is best. 

•^iir ecpar evx^ixevo^ ; for with some aspiration of piety he usu- 
ally concluded his more serious discourse, either giving it 
utterance, or with a silent motion of the lips, which the ex- 
pression of his countenance, as well as the tenour of what 
had gone before, rendered intelligible to those who knew him 
as I did. 



CHAPTER LXII. P. I. 

IN WHICH IS RELATED THE DISCOVERY OF A CERTAIN PORTRAIl 
AT DONCASTER. 

Call in the barber ! If the tale be long 
He'll cut It short, I trust. 

MiDDLETON. 

Here I must relate a circumstance which occurred during 
„Iit; few hours of my hist, and, by me, ever to be remembered 
'Jis'it to Doncaster. As we were on the way from the Old 
Angel Inn to the Mansionhouse, adjoining which stood, or, 
to speak more accurately, had stood the kebla to which the 
steps of my pilgrimage were bent, we were attracted by a 
small but picturesque group in a shaving shop, exhibited in 
strong relief by the light of a blazing fire and some glaring 
lamps. It was late in autumn and on a Saturday evening, at 
which time those persons in humble life, who cannot shave 
themselves, and whose sense of religion leads them to think 
that what may be done on the Saturday night ought not to 
be put off till the Sunday morning, settle their weekly ac- 
count with their beards. There was not story enough in the 
scene to have supplied Wilkie with a subject for his admi- 
rable genius to work upon, but he would certainly have 
sketched the group if he had seen it as we did. Stopping 
for a minute, at a civil distance from the door, we observed 
a picture over the fireplace, and it seemed so remarkable that 



THE DOCTOR. 33 

we asked permission to go in and look at it more nearly. I 
was an unfinished portrait, evidently of no common person, 
and by no common hand; and as evidently it had been 
painted many years ago. The head was so nearly finished 
that nothing seemed wanting to complete the likeness ; the 
breast and shoulders were faintly sketched in a sort of 
whitewash, which gave them the appearance of being cov- 
ered with a cloth. Upon asking the master of the shop if 
he could tell us whose portrait it was, Mambrino, who 
seemed to be a good-natured fellow, and was pleased at oui 
making the inquiry, replied that it had been in his possession 
many years, before he knew himself. A friend of his had 
made him a present of it, because, he said, the gentleman 
looked by his dress as if he was just ready to be shaved, and* 
had an apron under his chin ; and therefore his shop was the 
properest place for it. One day, however, the picture at- 
tracted the notice of a passing stranger, as it had done ours, 
and he recognised it for a portrait of Garrick. It certainly 
was so ; and any one who knows Garrick's face may satisfy 
himself of this when he happens to be in Doncaster. Mam- 
brino's shop is not far from the Old Angel, and on the same 
side of the street. 

My companion told me that when we entered the shop he 
had begun to hope it might prove to be a portrait of my old 
friend: he seemed even to be disappointed that we had not 
fallen upon such a discovery, supposing that it would have 
gratified me beyond measure. But upon considering in my 
own mind if this would have been the case, two questions pre- 
sented themselves. The first was, whether, knowing as I did 
that the doctor never sat for his portrait, and knowing also 
confidentially the reason why he never could be persuaded to 
do so, or raiher the feeling which possessed him on that sub- 
ject — knowing these things, I say, the first question was, 
whether if a stolen likeness had been discovered, I ought to 
have rejoiced in the discovery. For as I certainly should 
have endeavoured to purchase the picture, I should then have 
had to decide whether or not it was my duty to destroy it ; 
for which — or on the other hand for preserving it — so many 
strong reasons and so many refined ones, might have been 
produced, pro and con, that I could not have done either one 
or the other, without distrusting the justice of my own de- 
termination ; if I preserved it, I should continually be self-ac- 
cused for doing wrong ; if I destroyed it, self-reproaches 
would pursue me for having done what was irretrievable ; so 
that while I lived I should never have been out of nfy own 
court of conscience. And let me tell you, reader, that to be 
impleaded in that court is even worse than being brought into 
the court of chancery. 

Secondly, the more curious question occurred, whether if 



34 THE DOCTOR. 

there had been a portrait of Dr. Dove, it would have been 
hke him. 

" That," says Mr. Everydayman, " is as it might happen.-' 

"Pardon me, sir; my question does not regard happening 
Chance has nothing to do with the matter. The thing 
queried is whether it could or could not have been." 

And before I proceed to consider that question, I shall take 
the counsel which Catwg the Wise gave to his pupil Ta- 
liesin ; and which, by these presents, I recommend to every 
reader who may be disposed to consider himself, for the 
time being, as mine : — 

'• Think before thou speakest ; 

First, what thou shalt speak ; 

Secondly, why thou shouldst speak; 

Thirdly, to whom thou mayst have to speak ; 

Fourthly, about whom (or what) thou art to speak; 

Fifthly, what will come from what thou mayst speak ; 

Sixthly, what may be the benefit from what thou shalt 
speak ; 

Seventhly, who may be listening to what thou shalt speak. 

Put thy word on thy fingers' ends before thou speakest it, 
and turn it these seven ways before thou speakest it ; and 
there will never come any harm from what thou shalt say ! 

Catwg the Wise delivered this counsel to Taliesin, Chiet 
of Bards, in giving him his blessing." 



CHAPTER LXIII. P. I. 

A DISCUSSION CONCERNING THE QUESTION LAST PROPOSED. 

Questo e bene un de' piii profondi passi 
Che noi habbiamo ancora oggi tentato ; 
E non h mica da huomini bassi. 

Agnolo Firenzuola 

Good and satisfactory likenesses may, beyond all doubt,be 
taken of Mr. Everydayman himself, and indeed of most per- 
sons : and were it otherwise, portrait painting would be a 
worse profession than it is, though too many an unfortunate 
artist has reason bitterly to regret that he possessed the 
talents .which tempted him to engage in it. There are few 
faces of which even a mediocre painter cannot produce what 
is called a staring likeness, and Sir Thomas Lawrence a 
handsome one ; Sir Thomas is the painter who pleases every- 
body ! 

But there are some few faces with which no artist can 
succeed so as to please himself, (if he has a true feeling for 



THE DOCTOR. 35 

his own art,) or to content those persons who are best ac- 
quainted with the living countenance. This is the case where 
the character predominates over the features, and that char- 
acter itself is one in which many and seemingly opposite 
qualities are compounded. Garrick in Abel Drugger, Garrick 
in Sir John Brute, and Garrick in King Lear, presented three 
faces as different as were the parts which he personated; yet 
the portraits which have been published of him in those 
parts may be identified by the same marked features, which 
flexible as they were rendered by his histrionic power, still 
under all changes retained their strength and their peculiari- 
ty. But where the same flexibility exists and the features 
are not so peculiar or prominent, the character is then given 
by v/hat is fleeting, not by what is fixed ; and it is more dif- 
ficult to hit a likeness of this kind than to paint a rainbow. 

Now I cannot but think that the doctor's countenance was 
of this kind. I can call it to mind as vividly as it appears to 
me in dreams ; but I could impart no notion of it by descrip- 
tion. Words cannot delineate a single feature of his face, 
such words at least as my knowledge enables me to use. A 
sculptor, if he had measured it, might have given you tech- 
nically the relative proportions of his face, in all its parts : 
a painter might describe the facial angle, and how the eyes 
were set, and if they were well slit, and hov/ the lips were 
formed, and whether the chin was in the just mean between 
rueful length and spectatorial brevity ; and whether he could 
have passed over Strasburgh bridge without hearing any ob- 
servations made upon his nose. My own opinion is that the 
sentinel would have had something to say upon that subject ; 
and if he had been a Protestant soldier, (which, if an Alsacian, 
he was likely to be,) and accustomed to read the Bible, he 
might have been reminded by it of the Tower of Lebanon, 
looking towards Damascus ; for as an Italian Poet says — 

in prospettiva 
Ne mostra un barbacane sforachiato.* 

I might venture also to apply to the doctor's nose that safe 
generality by which Alcina's is described in the Orlando 
Furioso. 

" Quindi il naso, per mezzo il viso scende, 
Che non trova 1' invidia ova Pemende." 

But further than this, which amounts to no more than a 
doubtful opinion and a faint adumbration, I can say nothing 
that would assist any reader to form an idea at once definite 
and just, of any part of the doctor's face. I cannot even 
positively say what was the colour of his eyes. I only know 
that mirth sparkled in them, scorn flashed from them, thought 

♦ Mattio Franzesi 



36 THE DOCTOR. 

beamed in them, benevolence glistened in them ; that they 
were easily moved to smiles, easilj'" to tears. No barometer 
ever indicated more faithfully the changes of the atmos- 
phere than his countenance corresponded to the emotions of 
his mind vbut with a mind which might truly be said to have 
been 

" so various, that it seemed to be 
Not one, but all mankind's epitome ;" 

thus various not in its principles, or passions, or pursuits, but 
in its inquiries, and fancies, and speculations, and so alert that 
nothing seemed to escape its ever-watchful and active appre- 
hension — with such a mind the countenance that was its 
faithful index, was perpetually varying : its likeness, there- 
fore, at any one moment, could but represent a fraction of 
the character which identified it, and w^hich left upon you an 
indescribable and inimitable impression resulting from its 
totality, though in its totality it never was and never could 
be seen. 

Have I made myself understood 1 

I mean to say that the ideal face of any one to whom we 
are strongly and tenderly attached — that face which is en- 
shrined in our heart of hearts, ynd which comes to us in 
dreams long after it has mouldered in the grave — that face is 
not the exact mechanical countenance of the beloved person, 
not the countenance that we ever actually behold, but its ab- 
stract, its idealization, or rather its realization ; the spirit of 
the countenance, its essence and its life. And the finer the 
character, and the more various its intellectual powers, the 
more must this true £('^wAov differ from the most faithful like- 
ness that a painter or a sculptor can produce. 

Therefore I conclude that if there had been a portrait of 
Dr. Daniel Dove, it could not have been like him, for it was 
as impossible to paint the character which constituted the 
identity of his countenance, as to paint the flavour of an 
apple or the fragrance of a rose. 



THE DOCTOR 37 



CHAPTER LXIV. P. I. 

DEFENCE OF PORTRAIT PAINTING A SYSTEM OF MORAL COS- 
METICS RECOMMENDED TO TH&"LADIES — GWILLIM SIR THOMAS 

LAWRENCE GEORGE WITHER — APPLICATION TO THE SUBJECT 

OF THIS WORK. 

Pingitur in tabulis formas perituravenustas, 
Vivat ut m tabulis, quod perit in facie. 

Owen. 

The reader will mistake me greatly if he supposes that, 
in showing why it was impossible there should be a good 
portrait of Dr. Daniel Dove, I meant to depreciate the art of 
portrait painting. I have a very high respect for that art, 
and no person can be more sincerely persuaded of its moral 
uses. The great number of portraits in the annual exhibi- 
tions of our Royal Academy is so far from displeasing me 
that I have always regarded it as a symptom of wholesome 
feeling in the nation — an unequivocal proof that the domes- 
tic and social affections are still existing among us in their 
proper strength, and cherished as they ought to be. And 
when I have heard at any time observations of the would-be 
witty kind upon the vanity of those who allow their portraits 
thus to be hung up for public view, I have generally per- 
ceived that the remark implied a much greater degree of con- 
ceit in the speaker. As for allowing the portrait to be ex- 
hibited, that is no more than an act of justice to the artist, 
who has no other means of making his abilities known so 
well, and of forwarding himself in his profession. If we 
look round the rooms at Somerset House, and observe how 
large a proportion of the portraits represent children, the 
old, and persons in middle life, we shall see that very few 
indeed are those which can have been painted or exhibited 
for the gratification of personal vanity. 

Sir Thomas Lawrence ministers largely to self-admiration ; 
and yet a few years ripen even the most flattering of his por- 
traits into moral pictures ; 

Perch^, donne mie care, la bella 
Ha 1' ali al capo, a le spalle ed a' pih 
E vola si, che non si scorge piii 
Vestigio alcun ne' visi, dove fii.-* 

Helen, in her old age, looking at herself in a mirror, is ^ 
* Ricciardetto. 



38 THE DOCTOR. 

subject which old sonneteers were fond of borrowing from 
the Greek anthology. Young ladies ! you who have sat to 
Sir Thomas, or any artist of his school, I will tell you how 
your portraits may be rendered more useful monitors to you 
in your progress through life than the mirror was to Helen, 
and how you may derive more satisfaction from them when 
you are grown old. Without supposing that you actually 
" called up a look" for the painter's use, I may be certain 
that none of you during the times of sitting permitted any 
feeling of ill humour to cast a shade over your countenance ; 
and that if you were not conscious of endeavouring to put 
on your best looks for the occasion, the painter was desirous 
of catching them, and would catch the best he could. The 
most thoughtless of you need not be told that you cannot 
retain the charms of^ youthful beauty; but you may retain 
the charm of an amiable expression through life. Never 
allow yourselves to be seen with a worse face than you wore 
for the painter ' Whenever you feel ill tempered, remember 
that you look ugly ; and be assured that every emotion of 
fretfulness, of ill humour, of anger, of irritability, of impa- 
tience, of pride, haughtiness, envy, or malice, any unkind, 
any uncharitable, any ungenerous feeling, lessens the like- 
ness to your picture, and not only deforms you while it lasts, 
but leaves its trace behind ; for the effect of the passions upon 
the face is more rapid and more certain than that of time. 

" His counsel," says Gvvillim the pursuivant, " was very 
behooveful, who advised all gentlewomen often to look 
on glasses, that so, if they saw themselves beautiful, they 
might be stirred up to make their minds as fair by virtue as 
their faces were by nature; but if deformed, they might 
make amends for their outward deformity, with their intern 
pulchritude and gracious qualities. And those that are 
proud of their beauty should consider that their own hue is as 
brittle as the glass wherein they see it ; and that they carry 
on their shoulders nothing but a scull wrapped in skin, which 
one day will be loathsome to be looked on." 

The conclusion of this passage accorded not with the doc- 
tor's feelings. He thought that whatever tended to connect 
frightful and loathsome associations with the solemn and 
wholesome contemplation of mortality, ought to be avoided 
as injudicious and injurious. So, too, with regard to age : if 
it is dark and unlovely, " the fault," he used to. say, " is gen- 
erally our own. Nature may indeed make it an object of 
compassion, but not of dislike, unless we ourselves render 
it so. It is not of necessity that we grow ugly as well as 
old." Donne says, 

" No spring nor summer's beauty hath such grace 
As I have seen in one autumnal face." 



THE DOCTOR. 



39 



He was probably speaking of his wife, for Donne was happy 
in his marriage, as he deserved to be. There is a beauty 
which, as the Duchess of Newcastle said of her mother's, 
is " beyond the reach of time ;" that beauty depends upon 
the mind, upon the temper— young ladies, upon yourselves ! 
George Wither wrote under the best of his portraits — 

" What I WAS, is passed by ; 
What I AM, away doth fly ; 
What I SHALL BE, none do see ; 
Yet in that my beauties be." 

He commenced also a meditation upon that portrait in 
these impressive lines : — 

" When I behold my picture and perceive 
How vain it is our portraitures to leave 
In lines and shadows, (which make shows to-day 
Of that which will to-morrow fade away,) 
And think what mean resemblances at best 
Are by mechanic instruments express'd, 
I thought it better much to leave behind me. 
Some draught, in which my living friends might find me, 
The same I am, in that which will remain 
Till all is ruined and repaired again." 

In the same poem he says — 

" A picture, thougn with most exactness made, 
Is nothing but the shadow of a shade. 
For even our living bodies (though they seem 
To others more, or more in our esteem) 
Are but the shadow of that real Being, 
Which doth extend beyond the fleshly seeing, 
And cannot be discerned, until we rise 
Immortal objects for immortal eyes." 

Like most men, George Wither, as he grew more selfish, 
was tolerably successful in deceiving himself as to his own 
motives and state of mind. If ever there was an honest en- 
thusiast, he had been one; afterward he feathered his nest 
with the spoils of the loyalists and of the bishops ; and du- 
ring this prosperous part of his turbulent life there must have 
been times, when the remembrance of his former self brought 
with it more melancholy and more awful thoughts than the 
sight of his own youthful portrait, in its fantastic garb, or 
of that more sober resemblance upon which his meditation 
was composed. 

Such a portraiture of the inner or real being as Wither in 
his better mind wished to leave in his works, for those who 
knew and loved hi-m, such a portraiture am I endeavourin| 
to compose of Dr. Dove, wherein the world may see wha\ 
he was, and so become acquainted with his intellectual line- 
aments, and with those peculiarities, which, forming as it 



40 THE doctor! 

were the idiosyncrasy of his moral constitution, contributed 
in no small degree to those ever varying lights and shades of 
character and feeling in his living countenance, which, I 
believe, would have baffled the best pamter's art. 

Poi vol sapete quanto egli e dabbene, 
Com' ha gindizio, ingegno, e discrezione, 
Come conosce 11 vero, il bello, e '1 bene.* 



CHAPTER LXV. P. I. 

SOCIETY OF A COUNTRY TOWN SUCH A TOWN A MORE FAVOUR- 
ABLE HABITAT FOR SUCH A PERSON AS DR. DOVE THAN LONDON 
WOULD HAVE BEEN. 

Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell ; 

Inn anywhere ; 

And seeing the snail, which everywhere doth roam, 

Carrying his own home still, still is at home, 

Follow (for he is easy paced) this snail ; 

Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail. 

Donne. 

Such, then, as Daniel Dove was in the twenty-sixth year 
of his age, we are now to consider him, settled at Doncaster, 
and with his way of life chosen, for better for worse, in all 
respects ; except, as my female readers will remember, that 
he was neither married, nor engaged, nor likely to be so. 

One of the things for which he used to thank God was 
that the world had not been all before him where to choose, 
either as to calUng or place, but that both had been well 
chosen for him. To choose upon such just motives as can 
leave no rational cause for after repentance, requires riper 
judgment than ought to be expected at the age when the 
choice is to be made ; it is best for us therefore at a time of 
life when, though perhaps we might choose well, it is impos- 
sible that we could choose wisely, to acquiesce in the deter- 
mination of others, who have knowledge and experience to 
direct them. Far happier are they who always know what 
they are to do, than they who have to determine what they 
will do. 

Bisogna far quel che si deve fare, 
E non gia tutto quelle che si vuole.* 

Thus he was accustomed to think upon this subject. 
* Berni. t Pananti. 



THE DOCTOR. 41 

But was he well placed at Doncaster 1 

It matters not where those men are placed, who, as South 
says, " have souls so dull and stupid as to serve for little else 
but to keep their bodies from putrefaction." Ordinary people, 
w^ether their lot be cast in town or country, in the metropo- 
lis or in a village, will go on in the ordinary way, conforming 
their habits to those of the place. It matters nothing more 
to those who live less in the little world about them, than in 
a world of their own, with the whole powers of the head and 
of the heart too (if they have one) intently fixed upon some 
favourite pursuit — if they have a heart, I say, for it some- 
times happens that where there is an excellent head, the 
heart is nothing more than a piece of hard flesh. In this 
respect, the highest and the meanest intellects are, in a cer- 
tain sense, alike self-sufficient ; that is, they are so far inde- 
pendent of adventitious aid, that they derive little advantage 
from society and suffer nothing from the want of it. But 
there are others for whose mental improvement, or at least 
mental enjoyment, collision, and sympathy, and external ex- 
citement seem almost indispensable. Just as large towns 
are the only places in which first-rate workmen in any handi- 
craft business can find employment, so men of letters and of 
science generally appear to think that nowhere but in a me- 
tropolis can they find the opportunities which they desire of 
improvement or of display. These persons are wise in their 
generation, but they are not children of light. 

Among such persons it may perhaps be thought that our 
friend should be classed ; and it cannot be doubted that in a 
more conspicuous field of action, he might have distinguished 
himself, and obtained a splendid fortune. But for distinction 
he never entertained the slightest desire, and with the goods 
of fortune which had fallen to his share he was perfectly 
contented. But was he favourably situated for his intellect- 
ual advancement 1 which, if such an inquiry had come before 
him concerning any other person, is what he would have 
considered to be the question-issimus. I answer without the 
slightest hesitation, that he was. 

In London he might have mounted a physician's wig, have 
ridden in his carriage, have attained the honours of the col- 
lege, and added F.R.S. to his professional initials. He 
might, if Fortune opening her eyes had chosen to favour 
desert, have become Sir Daniel Dove, Bart., Physician to his 
Majesty. But he would then have been a very diff'erent per- 
son from the Dr. Dove of Doncaster, whose memory will be 
transmitted to posterity in these volumes, and he would have 
been much less worthy of being remembered. The course 
of such a life would have left him no leisure for himself; 
and metropolitan society, in rubbing off the singularities of 
his character, would just in the same degree have taken from 
its strength. 



42 THE DOCTOR. 

It is a pretty general opinion that no society can be so 
bad as that of a small country town ; and certain it is that 
such towns offer little or no choice. You must take what 
they have and make the best of it. But there are not many 
persons to whom circumstances allow much latitude of 
choice anywhere except in those public places, as they are 
called, where the idle and the dissipated, like birds of a fea- 
ther, flock together. In any settled place of residence, 
men are circumscribed by station and opportunities, and just 
as much in the capital as in a provincial town. No one will 
be disposed to regret this, if he observes where men have 
most power of choosing their society, how little benefit is 
derived from it, or in other words with how little wisdom it 
is used. 

After all, the common varieties of human character will 
be found distributed in much the same proportion every- 
where, and in most places there will be a sprinkling of the 
uncommon ones. Everywhere you may find the selfish and 
the sensual, the carking and the careful, the cunning and the 
credulous, the worldling and the reckless. But kind hearts 
are also everywhere to be found; right intentions, sober 
minds, and private virtues ; for the sake of which let us hope 
that God may continue to spare this hitherto highly favoured 
nation, notwithstanding the fearful amount of our public and 
manifold offences. 

The society, then, of Doncaster, in the middle of the last 
century, was like that of any other country town which was 
neither the seat of manufactures nor of a bishop's see; in 
either of which more information of a peculiar kind would 
have been found — more active minds, or more cultivated 
ones. There was enough of those eccentricities for which 
the English, above all other people, are remarkable; those 
aberrations of intellect which just fail to constitute legal in- 
sanity, and which, according to their degree, excite amuse- 
ment or compassion. Nor was the town without its full 
share of talents ; these there was little to foster and encour- 
age, but happily there was nothing to pervert and stimulate 
them to a premature and mischievous activity. 

In one respect it more resembled an episcopal than a tra- 
ding city. The four kings, and their respective suits of red 
and black, were not upon more frequent service in the pre- 
cincts of a cathedral than in the good town of Doncaster. 
A stranger, who had been invited to spend the evening with 
a family there, to which he had been introduced, was asked 
by the master of the house to take a card as a matter of 
course ; upon his replying that he did not play at cards, the 
company looked at him with astonishment, and his host ex- 
claimed, " What, sir ! not play at cards 1 the Lord help you '" 

I will not say the Lord helped Daniel Dove, because there 
vould be an air of irreverence in the expression, the case 



THE DOCTOR. 43 

being one in which he, or any one, might help himself. He 
knew enough of all the games which were then in vogue to 
have played at them, if he had so thought good; and he 
would have been as willing, sometimes, in certain moods of 
mind, to have taken his seat at a card table, in houses where 
card-playing did not form part of the regular business of life, 
as to have listened to a tune on the oldfashioned spinnet, or 
the then newfashioned harpsichord. But that which as an 
occasional pastime he might have thought harmless, and even 
wholesome, seemed to him something worse than folly when 
it was made a killtime — the serious occupation for which 
people were brought together — the only one at which some 
of them ever appeared to give themselves the trouble of think- 
ing. And seeing its effects upon the temper, and how nearly 
this habit was connected with a spirit of gambling, he thought 
that cards had not without reason been called the devil's 
books. 

I shall not, therefore, introduce the reader to a Doncaster 
card party, by way of showing him the society of the place. 
The Mrs. Shuffles, Mrs. Cuts, and Misses Dealem, the Mr. 
Tittles and Mrs. Tattles, the Humdrums and the Prateapaces, 
the Fribbles and the Peebles, the Perts and the Prims, the 
Littlewits and the Longtongues, the Heavyheads and the 
Broadbelows, are to be found everywhere. 

" It is quite right," says one of the guessers at truth, " that 
there should be a heavy duty on cards: not only on moral 
grounds ; not only because they act on a social party like a 
torpedo, silencing the merry voice, and numbing the play of 
the features; not only to still the hunger of the pubhc 
purse, which, reversing the qualities of Fortunatis's, is always 
empty, however much you may put in it ; but also because 
every pack of cards is a malicious libel on courts, and on the 
world, seeing that the trumpery with number one at the 
head is the best part of them, and that it gives kings and 
queens no other companions than knaves." 



44 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER LXVI. P. I. 

MR. COPLET OF NETHERHALL SOCIETY AT HIS HOUSE DRUMMOND 

BURGH — GRAY — MASON MILLER THE ORGANIST AND HISTO- 
RIAN OF PONCASTER^HERSCHEL. 

All worldly joys go less 
To the one joy of doing kindnesses. 

Herbert. 

There was one house in Doncaster in which cards were 
never introduced : this house was Netherhall, the seat of Mr. 
Copley ; and there Dr. Dove had the advantage of such so- 
ciety as was at that time very rarely, and is still not often to 
be enjoyed anywhere. 

The Copleys are one of the most ancient families in Don- 
caster : Robert Grossetete, one of the most eminent of our 
English churchmen before the Reformation, was a branch 
from their stock. Robert Copley, w^ho, in the middle of the 
last century, represented the family, was brought up at 
Westminster school, and while there took (what is very un- 
usual for boys at Westminster, or any other school, to take) 
lessons hi music. Dr. Crofts was his master, and made him, 
as has been said by a very competent judge, a very good 
performer in thoroughbass on the harpsichord. He at- 
tempted painting also, but not with equal success ; the age 
of painting in this country had not then arrived. 

Mr. Copley's income never exceeded twelve hundred a 
year ; but this, which is still a liberal income, was then a 
large one, in the hands of a wise and prudent man. Nether- 
hall was the resort of intellectual men, in whose company 
he delighted ; and the poor were fed daily from his table. 
Drummond, afterward archbishop of York, was his frequent 
guest : so was ]Mason ; so was Mason's friend. Dr. Burgh ; 
and Gray has sometimes been entertained there. One of 
the " strong names" of the King of Dahomey means, when 
mterpreted, " wherever 1 rub I leave my scent." In a better 
sense than belongs to this metaphorical boast of the power 
and the di>position to be terrible, it maybe said of such men 
as Gray and Mason that wherever they have resided, or have 
been entertained as abiding guests, an odour of their 
memory remains. Who passes by the house at Streatham 
that was once Mrs. Thrale's, without thinking of Dr. John- 
son ] 

During many years Mr. Copley entertained himself and 
his friends with a weekly concert at Netherhall, he himself 



THE DOCTOR. 45 

Sir Brian Cooke and some of his family, and Dr. Miller the 
organist, and afterward historian of Doncaster, being per- 
formers. Miller, who was himself a remarkable person, had 
the fortune to introduce a more remarkable one to these con- 
certs ; it is an interesting anecdote in the history of that 
person of Miller, and of Doncaster. 

About the year 1760, as Miller was dining at Pontefract 
with the officers of the Durham militia, one of them knowing 
his love of music, told him they had a young German in 
their band as a performer on the hautboy, who had only been 
a few months in England, and yet spoke English almost as 
well as a native, and who was also an excellent performer 
on the violin; the officer added, that if Miller would come 
into another room this German should entertain him with 
a solo. The invitation was gladly accepted, and Miller 
heard a solo of Giardini's executed in a manner that sur- 
prised him. He afterward took an opportunity of having 
some private conversation with the young musician, and 
asked him whether he had engaged himself for any long 
period to the Durham militia. The answer was, "only 
from month to month." "Leave them then," said the or- 
ganist, " and come and live with me. I am a single man, 
and think we shall be happy together ; and doubtless your 
merit will soon entitle you to a more ehgible situation." 
The offer was accepted as frankly as it was made : and the 
reader may imagine with what satisfaction Dr. Miller must 
have remembered this act of generous feeling, when he 
hears that this young German was Herschel the astron- 
omer. 

" My humble mansion," says Miller, " consisted, at that 
time, but of two rooms. However, poor as I was, my cot- 
tage contained a small library of well-chosen books ; and it 
must appear singular that a foreigner who had been so short 
a time in England should understand even the peculiarities 
of the language so well, as to fix upon Swift for his favour- 
ite author." He took an early opportunity of introducing 
his new friend at Mr. Copley's concerts ; the first violin was 
resigned to him : and never, says the organist, had I heard 
the concertos of Corelli, Geminiani, and Avison, or the over- 
tures of Handel, performed more chastely, or more accord- 
ing to the original intention of the composers than by Mr. 
Herschel. I soon lost my companion: his fame was pres- 
ently spread abroad ; he had the offer of pupils, aiid was so- 
licited to lead the public concerts both at Wakefield and 
Halifax. A. new organ for the parish church of Halifax was 
built about this time, and Herschel w^as one of the seven can- 
didates for the organist's place. They drew lots how they 
were to perform in succession. Herschel drew the third, 
the second fell to Mr., afterward Dr. Wainright of Man- 
chester, whose finger was so rapid that old Snetzler, the 



46 THE DOCTOR. 

organ builder, ran about the church, exclaimmg-, Te level! 
ie tevel ! he run over te keys like one cat ; lie will not give 
my -piphes room for to shpeakl " During Mr. Wainright's per- 
formance," says Miller, " I was standing in the middle aisle 
with Herschel. ' What chance have you,' said I, ' to follow 
this man V He rephed, ' 1 don't know ; I am sure fingers will 
not do.' On which he ascended the organ loft, and pro- 
duced from the organ so uncommon a fulness — such a volume 
of slow soleaui harmony, that I could by no means account 
for the effect. After this short extempore effusion, he fin- 
ished with the old hundred psalm tune, which he played 
better than his opponent. Ay, ay, cried old Snetzler, tish 
is very goot, very goot indeet ; I vil luf tish man, for he gives 
my piphes room for to shpeak. Having afterward asked Mr. 
Herschel by what means, in the beginning of his performance, 
he produced so uncommon an effect, he rephed, ' I told you 
fingers would not do !' and producing two pieces of lead 
from his waistcoat pocket, 'one of these,' said he, '1 placed 
on the lowest key of the organ, and the other upon the 
octave above ; thus by accommodating the harmony, I pro- 
duced the effect of four hands instead of two.' " 



CHAPTER LXVn. P. I. 

A MYTHOLOGICAL STORY MORALIZED. 

11 faut mettre les fables en presse pour en tirer quelque sue de verity 
-Garasse. 

It is related of the great mythological personage Baly, 
that Veeshnoo, when he dispossessed him of his impious 
power, allowed him, in mitigation of his lot, to make his 
choice, whether he would go to the swerga, and take five 
ignorant persons with him who were to be his everlasting 
companions there, or to padalon and have five pundits in 
his company. Baly preferred the good company with the 
bad quarters. 

That which is called good company has led many a man 
to a place which it is not considered decorous to mention 
before "ears polite," is a common, and, therefore, the 
more an awful truth. The swerga and padalon are the 
Hindoo heaven and hell ; and if the Hindoo fable were not 
obviously intended to extol the merits of their pundits, or 
learned men, as the missionary ward explains the title, it 
might with much seeming likelihood bear this mortal inter- 
pretation ; that Baly retained the pride of knowledge even 



THE DOCTOR. 47 

wnen convinced by the deprivation of his power that the 
pride of power was vanity, and in consequence drew upon 
himself a further punishment by his choice. 

For although Baly, because of the righteousness with 
which he had used his power, was so far favoured by the di- 
vinity whom he had offended, that he was not condemned to 
undergo any of those torments of which there was as rich 
an assortment and as choice a variety in padalon, as ever 
monkish imagination revelled in devising, it was at the best 
a dreadful place of abode : and so it would appear if Turner 
were to paint a picture of its Diamond City from Southey's 
description. I say Turner, because, though the subject 
might seem more adapted to Martin's cast of mind, Turner's 
colouring would well represent the fiery streams and the 
sulphureous atmosphere; and that colouring being trans- 
ferred from earthly landscapes to its proper place, his rich 
genius would have full scope for its appropriate display. 
Baly, no doubt, as a state prisoner who was to be treated 
with the highest consideration as well as with the utmost 
indulgence, would have all the accommodations that Yamen 
could afford him. There he and the pundits might 

" reason high 
Of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, 
Fix'd fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute, 
And find no end, in wandering mazes lost." 

They might argue there of good and evil, 

" Of happiness and final misery, 
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame :" 

and such discourses possibly 

'• with a pleasing sorcery might charm 
Pain for a while ai)d anguish, and excite 
Fallacious hope, or arm the obdured breast 
With stubborn patience as with triple steel." 

But it would only be^or a while that they could be thus be- 
guiled by it, for it is 

" Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy !" 

it would be only for a while, and they were there for a time 
which in prospect must appear all but endless. The pundits 
would not thank him for bringing them there ; Baly himself 
must continually wish he were breathing the heavenly air of 
the swerga in the company of ignorant but happy associates, 
and he would regret his unwise choice even more bitterly 
than he remembered the glorious city wherein he had 
reigned in his magnificence. 



48 THE DOCTOR. 

He made a great mistake. If he had gone with the igno- 
rant to heaven he would have seen them happy there, and 
partaken their happiness, though they might not have been 
able to derive any gratification from his wisdom ; which said 
wisdom, peradventure, he himself when he was there might 
have discovered to be but foolishness. It is only in the 
company of the good that real enjoyment is to be found ; 
any other society is hollow and heartless. You may be ex- 
cited by the play of wit, by the collision of ambitious spirits, 
and by the brilliant exhibition of self-confident power; but 
the satisfaction ends with the scene. Far unhke this is the 
quiet confiding intercourse of sincere minds and friendly 
hearts, knowing, and loving, and esteeming each other ; and 
such intercourse our philosopher enjoyed in Doncaster. 

Edward Miller the organist was a person very much after 
Daniel Dove's own heart. He was a warmhearted, simple- 
hearted, righthearted man ; an enthusiast in his profession, 
yet not undervaluing, much less despising, other pursuits. 
The one doctor knew as little of music as the other did of 
medicine ; but Dr. Dove hstened to Miller's performance 
with great pleasure, and Dr. Miller, when he was indisposed, 
took Dove's physic with perfect faith. 

This musician was brother to William Miller, the book- 
seller, well known in the early part of the present century 
as a publisher of splendid works, to whose flourishing busi- 
ness in Albeniarle-street the more flourishing John Murray 
succeeded. In the worldly sense of the word the musician 
was far less fortunate than the bibliopole, a doctorate in his 
own science being the height of the honours to which he 
attained, and the place of organist at Doncaster the height 
of the preferment. A higher station was once presented to 
his hopes. The Marqui^ of Rockingham applied in his be- 
half for the place of master of his majesty's band of musi- 
cians, then vacated by the death of Dr. Boyce ; and the 
Duke of Manchester, who was at that time lord chamberlain, 
would have given it him if the king had not particularly de- 
sired him to bestow it on Mr. Stanley, the celebrated blind 
performer on the organ. Dr. Miller was more gratified by 
this proof of the marquis's good will towards him, than dis- 
appointed at its failure. Had the application succeeded he 
would not have written the History of Doncaster ; nor would 
he have borne a part in a well intended and judicious attempt 
at reforming our church psalmody, in which part of our 
church service reformation is greatly needed. This merito- 
rious attempt was made when George Hay Drummond, whose 
father had been archbishop of York, was vicar of Doncaster, 
having been presented to that vicarage in 1785, on the demise 
of Mr. Hatfield. 

At that time the parish clerk, used there as in all other 
parish churches to choose what psalm should be sung " to the 



THE DOCTOK. 49 

praise and glory of God," and what portions of it ; and con- 
sidering himself as a much more important personage in this 
department of his office than the organist, the only commu- 
nication upon the subject which he held with Dr. Miller was 
to let him know what tune he must play, and how often he 
was to repeat it. " Strange absurdity !" says Miller. " How 
could the organist placed in this degrading situation properly 
perform his part of the church service 1 Not knowing the 
words, it was impossible for him to accommodate his music 
to the various sentiments contained in different stanzas ; con- 
sequently his must be a mere random performance, and fre- 
quently producing improper effects." This, however, is 
what only a musician would feel; but it happened one 
Sunday that the clerk gave out some verses which were 
eitlier ridiculously inapplicable to the day, or bore some acci- 
dental and ludicrous application, so that many of the con- 
gregation did not refrain from laught'--:r. Mr. Drummond, 
upon this, for he was zealously attentive to hi. the duties of 
his calling, said to Miller, " that in order to prevent any such 
occurrence in future, he would make a selection oi the bebt 
verses in each psalm, from the autliorized version of Tate 
and Brady, and arrange them for every Sunday and festival 
throughout the year, provided he, the organist, who Vv'as per- 
fectly qualified for such a task, would adapt them lo proper 
muaic." To such a man as Miller ihis was the greatest grnti- 
fication that could have been afforded ; and ii proved also to 
be of the greatest service that was ever rendered lo him m 
the course of his life ; for through Mr. Drummond's interest 
the king and the bishop patronised tiie work, and nearly five 
thousand copies were suDscribed for, the list of subocriders 
being, it is beheved, longer than had ever been obtained for 
any musical publication in this kingdom. 

Strange to say, nothing of tliis kind iiad been attempted 
before ; for the use of psalmody m our churches was origin- 
ally no part of the service ; but having as it were crept in, 
and been at first rather suffered than encouraged, and after- 
ward allowed and permitted only, not enjoined, no provision 
seems ever to have been made for its proper, or even decent 
performance. And when an arrangement like this of xMr. 
Drummond's had been prepared, and Dr. Miller, with sound 
judgment, had adapted it, where that could be done, to the 
most popular of the old and venerable melodies which had 
been so long in possession, it may seem more strange that it 
should not have been brought into general use. This, I say, 
might be thought strange, if any instance of that supine and 
sinful neghgence which permits the continuance of old and 
acknowledged defects in the church establishment and church 
service, could be thought so. 

Mr. Drummond had probably been led to think upon this 
subject by Mason's conversation, and by his Essays, histori- 



50 THE DOCTOR. 

cal and critical, on English Church Music. Mason, who had 
a poet's ear and eye, was ambitious of becoming both a 
musician and a painter. According to Miller he succeeded 
better in his musical than in his pictorial attempts, for he 
performed decently on the harpsichord; but in painting he 
never arrived even at a degree of mediocrity, and in music 
it was not possible to teach him the principles of composi- 
tion, Miller and others having at his own desire attempted in 
vain to instruct him. Nevertheless, such a man, however 
superficial his knowledge of the art, could not but feel and 
reason justly upon its use and abuse in our church service; 
and he was for restricting the organist much in the same 
way that Drummond and Miller were for restraining the 
clerk. For after observing that what is called the voluntary 
requires an innate inventive faculty, which is certainl}'^ not 
the lot of many ; and that the happy few who possess it will 
not at all times be able to restrain it within the bounds which 
reason and, in this case, religion would prescribe, he said, 
" it was to be wished, therefore, that in our estabUshed church 
extempore playing were as much discountenanced as extem- 
pore praying ; and that the organist were as closely obliged 
in this solo and separate part of his office to keep to set 
forms, as the officiating minister ; or as he himself is when 
accompanying the choir in an anthem, or a parochial congre- 
gation in a psalm." He would have indulged him, however, 
with a considerable quantity of these set forms, and have 
allowed him, if he approached in some degree to Rousseau's 
high character of a preluder, " to descant on certain single 
grave texts which Tartini, Geminiani, Corelli, or Handel 
would abundantly furnish, and which may be found at least 
of equal elegance and propriety in the largo and adagio 
movements of Haydn or Pleyel." 

Whatever Miller may have thought of this proposal, there 
was a passage in Mason's Essay in favour of voluntaries 
which was in perfect accord with Dr. Dove's notions. 
"Prompt and as it were casual strains," says the poet, 
" which do not fix the attention of the hearer, provided they 
are the produce of an original fancy, which scorns to debase 
itself by imitating common and trivial melodies, are of all 
others the best adapted to induce mental serenity. We in 
some sort listen to such music as we do to the pleasing nmr- 
mur of a neighbouring brook, the whisper of the passing 
breeze, or the distant warblings of the lark and nightingale ; 
and if agreeable natural voices have the power of soothing 
the contemplative mind, without interrupting its contempla- 
tions, simple musical effusions must assuredly have that 
power in a superior degree. All that is to be attended to by 
the organist is to preserve such pleasing simplicity ; and this, 
musical measures will ever have, if they are neither strongly 
accented, nor too regularly rhythmical. But when this is 



THE DOCTOR. 51 

the case, they cease to soothe us, because they begin to 
affect us. Add to this that an air replete with short ca- 
dences and similar passages is apt to fix itself too strongly 
on the memory ; whereas a merely melodious or harmonical 
movement glides, as it were, through the ear, awakens a 
transient pleasing sensation, but leaves behind it no lasting 
impression. Its effect ceases, when its impulse on the audi- 
tory nerve ceases ; an impulse strong enough to dispel from 
the mind all eating care, (to use our great poet's own expres- 
sion,) but in no sort to rouse or ruffle any of its faculties, 
save those only which attend truly devotional duty." 

This passage agreed with some of the doctor's peculiar 
notions. He felt the power of devotional music both in such 
preparatory strains as Mason has here described, and in the 
more exciting emotions of congregational psalmody. And 
being thus sensible of the religious uses which may be drawn 
from music, he was the more easily led to entertain certain 
speculations concerning its application in the treatment of 
diseases, as will be related hereafter. 



CHAPTER LXVni. P. I. 

ECCENTRIC PERSONS, WHY APPARENTLY MORE COMMON IN ENG- 
LAND THAN IN OTHER COUNTRIES HARRY BINGLEY. 

Bless'd are those 
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, 
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger 
To sound what stop she please. 

Hamlet. 

There is a reason why eccentricity of character seems to 
be much more frequent in England than in other countries. 

Here some reflective reader, methinks, interrupts me 
with, " Seems, good author V 

" Ay, and it is !" 

Have patience, good reader, and hear me to the end! 
There is a reason why it seems so ; and the reason is, be- 
cause all such eccentricities are recorded here in newspapers 
and magazines, so that none of them are lost; and the most 
remarkable are brought forward from time to time, in popu- 
lar compilations. A collection of what is called Eccentric 
Biography is to form a portion of Mr. Murray's Family Li- 
brary. 

But eccentric characters probably are more frequent among 
us than among most other nations ; and for this there are 
two causes. The first is to be found in that spirit of inde- 



52 THE DOCTOR. 

pendence upon which the English pride themselves, and 
which produces a sort of Drawcansir-like bravery in men 
who are eccentrically inclined. It becomes a perverse sort 
of pleasure in them to act preposterously, for the sake of 
showing that they have a right to do as they please, and the 
courage to exercise that right, let the rest of the world think 
what it will of their conduct. 

The other reason is, that madhouses very insufficiently 
supply the place of convents, and very ill also. It might 
almost be questioned whether convents do not wellnigh 
make amends to humanity for their manifold mischiefs and 
abominations, by the relief which they afford as asylums 
for insanity, in so many of its forms and gradations. They 
afford a cure also in many of its stages, and precisely upon 
the same principle on which the treatment in madhouses 
is founded; but, oh! how differently is that principle ap- 
plied ! That passive obedience to another's will, which in 
the one case is exacted by authority acting through fear, and 
oftentimes enforced by no scrupulous or tender means, is in 
the other required as a religious duty — an act of virtue — a 
voluntary and accepted sacrifice — a good work which will 
be carried t.) 4he patient's account in the world to come. 
They who enter a convent are to have no will of their own 
there ; they renounce it solemnly upon their admission; and 
when this abnegation is sincerely made, the chief mental 
cause of insanity is removed. For assuredly, in most cases, 
madness is more frequently a disease of the will than of the 
intellect. When Diabolus appeared before the town of Man- 
soul, and made his oration to the citizens at Ear gate. Lord 
Will-be-will was one of the first that was for consenting to 
his words and letting him into the town. 

We have no such asylums in which madness and fatuity 
receive every possible alleviation, while they are at the 
same time subjected to the continual restraint which their 
condition requires. They are wanted also for repentant sin- 
ners, who, when they are awakened to a sense of their folly, 
and their guilt, and their danger, would fain find a place for 
religious retirement wherein they might pass the remainder 
of their days in preparing for death. Lord Goring, the most 
profligate man of his age, who by his profligacy, as much as 
by his frequent misconduct, rendered irreparable injury to 
the cause which he intended to serve, retired to Spain after 
the ruin of that cause, and there ended his days as a Domin- 
ican friar. If there be any record of him in the chronicles 
of the order, the account ought to be curious, at least, if not 
edifying. But it is rather (for his own sake) to be hoped 
than supposed that he did not hate and despise the follies 
and the frauds of the fraternity into which he had entered, 
more heartily than the pomps and vanities of the world 
which he had left. 



THE DOCTOR. 58 

On the other hand, wherever convents are amoi 5 'lie insti- 
tutions of the land, not to speak of those poor creatures who 
are thrust into them against their will, or with only a mock- 
ery of freedom in their choice, it must often happen that 
persons enter them in some fit of disappointment, or resent- 
ment, or grief, and find themselves, when the first bitternes*^ 
of passion is past, imprisoned for life by their own rash but 
irremediable act and deed. The woman who, when untoward 
circumstances have prevented her from marrying the man 
she loves, marries one for whom she has no affection, is 
more likely (poor as her chance is) to find contentment, and 
perhaps happiness, than if for the same cause she had thrown 
herself into a nunnery. Yet this latter is the course to which, 
if she were a Roman Catholic, her thoughts would perhaps 
preferably at first have turned, and to which they would prob- 
ably be directed by her confessor. 

Men who are weary of the ways of the world, or disgusted 
with them, have more license, as well as more resources, than 
women. If they do not enter upon some dangerous path of 
duty, or commence wanderers, they may choose for them- 
selves an eccentric path, in which, if their habits are not 
such as expose them to insult, or if their means are suffi- 
cient to secure them against it, they are not likely to be mo- 
lested, provided they have no relations whose interest it may 
be to apply for a statute of lunacy against them. 

A gentleman of this description, well known in London 
towards the close of George the Second's reign, by the name 
of Harry Bingley, came in the days of Dr. Dove to reside 
upon his estate in the parish of Bolton upon Derne, near Don- 
caster. He had figured as an orator and politician in coffee- 
houses at the west end of the town, and enjoyed the sort of 
notoriety which it was then his ambition to obtain ; but, dis- 
covering with the preacher that this was vanity and vexation 
of spirit, when it was either too late for him to enter upon 
domestic life, or his habits had unfitted him for it, he retired 
to his estate, which, with the house upon it, he had let to a 
farmer; in that house he occupied two rooms, and there in- 
dulged his humour as he had done in London, though it had 
now taken a very different direction. 

" Cousin-german to Idleness," says Burton, is "m'/ma soli- 
tudo — too nmch solitariness. Divers are cast upon this 
rock for want of means, or out of a strong apprehension of 
some infirmity, disgrace, or through bashfulness, rudeness, 
simplicity, they cannot apply themselves to others' company. 
A''ullum solum infelici gratius solitudine^ ubi nullus sit qui 
miseriam expruhret. This enforced solitariness lakes place 
and produceth his effect soonest in such as have spent their 
time jovially, peradventure, in all honest recreations, in good 
company, in some great family or populous city, and are 
upon a sudden confined to a desert country cottage far off", 
13 



54 THE DOCTOR. 

restrained of their liberty, aiid barred from their ordinary 
associates. Solitariness is very irksome to such, mos; 
tedious, and a sudden cause of great inconvenience." 

The change in Bingley's life was as great and sudden as 
that which the anatomist of melancholy has here described, 
but it led to no bodily disease nor to any tangible malady. 
His property was worth about fourteen hundred a year. He 
kept no servant, and no company ; and he lived upon water 
gruel and celery, except at harvest time, when he regaled 
himself with sparrow pies, made of the young birds just 
fledged, for which he paid the poor inhabitants who caught 
them twopence a head. Probably he supposed that it was 
rendering the neighbourhood a service thus to rid it of what 
he considered both a nuisance and a delicacy. This was his 
only luxury ; and his only business was to collect about a 
dozen boys and girls on Sundays, and hear them say their 
catechism and read a chapter in the New Testament, for 
which they received remuneration in the intelligible form of 
twopence each, but at the feasts and statutes, " most sweet 
guerdon, better than remuneration," in the shape of sixpence. 
He stood godfather for several poor people's children : they 
were baptized by his surname. When they were of proper 
age he used to put them out as apprentices; and in his will 
he left each of them a hundred guineas, to be paid when they 
reached the age of twenty-five if they were married ; but not 
till they married ; and if they reached the age of fifty without 
marrying, the legacy was then forfeited. There were two 
children for whom he stood godfather, but whose parents did 
not choose that they should be named after him ; he never 
took any notice of these children, nor did he bequeath them 
anything ; but to one of the others he left the greater part 
of his property. 

This man used every week day to lock himself in the church 
and pace the aisles for two hours, from ten till twelve o'clock. 
An author who, in his own peculiar and admirable way, is 
one of the most affecting writers of any age or country, has 
described with characteristic feeling the different effects 
produced upon certain minds by entering an empty or a 
crowded church. " In the latter," he says, " it is chance but 
some present human frailty — an act of inattention on the 
part of some of the auditory — or a trait of affectation, or 
worse vainglory on that of the preacher — puts us by our 
best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the occasion. 
But wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness 1 go alone on 
some week day, borrowing the keys of good master sexton; 
traverse the cool aisles of some country church ; think of the 
piety that has knelt there — the congregations, old and young, 
that have found consolation there ; the meek pastor— the do- 
cile parishioners — with no disturbing emotions, no cross 
conflicting comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, 



THE DOCTOR. 55 

till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the mar- 
ble effigies that kneel and weep around thee !"* 

Harry Bingley died in a lodging at Rotherham, whither he 
had removed when he felt himself ill, that he might save 
expense by being nearer a physician. According to his 
own directions his body was brought back from thence to 
the village, and interred in the churchyard ; and he strictly 
enjoined that no breastplate, handles, or any ornaments 
whatever should be affixed to his coffin, nor any gravestone 
placed to mark the spot where his remains were deposited. 

Would or would not this godfather-general have been 
happier in a convent or a hermitage, than he was in thus 
following his own humour ? It was Dr. Dove's opinion that 
upon the whole he would ; not that a conventual, and still 
less an eremital way of life would have been more rational, 
but because there would have been a worthier motive for 
choosing it ; and if not a more reasonable hope, at least a 
firmer persuasion that it was the sure way to salvation. 

That Harry Bingley's mind had taken a religious turn, 
appeared by his choosing the church for his daily place of 
promenade. Meditation must have been as much his object 
as exercise, and of a kind which the place invited. It ap- 
peared also by the sort of Sunday schooling which he gave 
the children, long before Sunday schools — whether for good 
or evil — were instituted, or, as the phrase is, invented by 
Robert Raikes of eccentric memory. (Patrons and pa- 
tronesses of Sunday schools, be not offended if a doubt con- 
cerning their utility be here implied ! The doctor enter- 
tained such a doubt : and the why and the wherefore shall in 
due time be fairly stated.) But Bingley certainly came 
under the description of a humorist, rather than of a devotee 
or religious enthusiast ; in fact he bore that character. And 
the doctor's knowledge of human nature led him to con- 
clude that solitary humorists are far from being happy. 
You see them, as you see the blind, at their happiest times, 
when they have something to divert their thoughts. But in 
the humorist's course of life, there is a sort of defiance of 
the world and the world's law ; indeed, any man who departs 
widely from its usages, avows this ; and it is, as it ought to 
be, an uneasy and uncomfortable feeling, wherever it is not 
sustained by a high state of excitement ; and that state, if 
it be lasting, becomes madness. Such persons, when left to 
themselves and to their own reflections, as they necessarily 
are for the greater part of their time, must often stand not 
only self-arraigned for folly, but self-condemned for it. 

* The Last Essays of Elia. 



56 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER LXIX. P. I. 

A MUSICAL RECLUSE AND HIS SISTER. 

Some proverb maker, I forget who, says, " God hath given to some men 
wisdom and understanding, and to others the art of playing on the fiddle," 
— Professor Park's Dogmas of the Constitution. 

The doctor always spoke of Bingley as a melancholy ex- 
ample of strength of character misapplied. But he used to 
say that strength of character was far from implying strength 
of mind ; and that strength of mind itself was no more a 
proof of sanity of mind, than strength of body was of bodily 
health. Both may coexist with mortal maladies, and both, 
when existing in any remarkable degree, may oftentimes be 
the cause of them. 

Alas for man ! 
Exuberant health diseases him, frail worm ' 
And the slight bias of untoward chance 
Makes his best virtues from the even line, 
With fatal declination, swer\'e aside.* 

There was another person within his circuit who had 
taken umbrage at the world, and withdrawn from it to enjoy, 
or rather to solace himself according to his own humour in 
retirement ; not in solitude, for he had a sister, who with 
true sisterly affection accommodated herself to his inclina- 
tions, and partook of his taste. This gentleman, whose 
name was Jonathan Staniforth, had taken out a patent for a 
ploughing machine, and had been deprived, unjustly as he 
deemed, of the profits which he had expected from it, by a 
lawsuit. Upon this real disappointment, aggravated by the 
sense, whether well or ill founded, of injustice, he retired to 
his mansion in the village of Firbeck, about ten miles south of 
Doncaster, and there, discarding all thoughts of mechanics, 
which had been his favourite pursuit, he devoted himself to 
the practice of music ; devoted is not too strong an expres- 
sion. He had passed the middle of his life before the doctor 
knew him ; and it was not till some twenty years later that 
Miller became acquainted with him. 

" I was introduced," says the organist, " into a room 
where was sitting a thin old gentleman, upward of seventy 
years of age, playing on the violin. He had a long time 
lived sequestered from the world, and dedicated not less 

* Roderick. 



THE DOCTOR. 57 

than eight hours a day to the practice of music". His shrunk 
shanks were twisted in a peculiar form, by the constant 
posture in which he sat ; and so indifferent was he about 
the goodness of his instrument, that to my astonishment, he 
always played on a common Dutch fiddle, the original price 
of which could not be more than half a guinea ; the strings 
were bad, and the whole instrument dirty and covered with 
rosin. With this humble companion, he used to work 
hard every morning on the old solos of Vivaldi, Tassarini, 
Corelli, and other ancient composers. The evening was 
reserved for mere amusement, in accompanying an an- 
cient sister, who sung most of the favourite songs from 
Handel's old Italian operas, which he composed soon after 
his arrival in England. These operas she had heard on 
their first representation in London ; consequently her per- 
formance was to me an uncommon treat. I had an oppor* 
tunity of comparing the different manner of singing in the 
beginning of the century, to that which I had been accus- 
tomed to hear. And indeed the style was so different, that 
musically considered, it might truly be called a different 
language. None of the present embellishments or graces in 
music were used — no appoggiatura — no unadorned sustain- 
ing, or swelling long notes ; they were warbled by a con- 
tinual tremulous accent from beginning to end ; and when 
she arrived at the period of an air, the brother's violin be- 
came mute, and she, raising her eyes to the top of the room, 
and stretching out her throat, executed her extempore ca- 
dence in a succession of notes perfectly original, and con- 
cluded with a long shake something like the bleating of a 
lamb." 

Miller's feelings during this visit were so wholly profes- 
sional, that in describing this brother and sister forty years 
afterward, he appears not to have been sensible in how af- 
fecting a situation they were placed. Crabbe would have 
treated these characters finely had they fallen in his way. 
And so Chancey Hare Townsend could treat them, who has 
imitated Crabbe with such singular skill, and who has, more- 
over, music in his soul, and could give the picture the soft 
touches which it requires. 

I must not omit to say that Mr. Staniforth and his sister 
were benevolent, hospitable, sensible, worthy persons. 
Thinkest thou, reader, that they gave no proof of good 
sense in thus passing their lives? Look round the circle 
of thine acquaintance, and ask thyself how many of those 
whose time is at their own disposal, dispose of it more 
wisely — that is to say, more beneficially to others, or more 
satisfactorily to themselves. The sister fulfilled her proper 
duties in her proper place, and the brother in contributing to 
her comfort performed his ; to each other they were as their 
circumstances required them to be, all in all ; they were kind 



58 THE DOCTOR. 

to their poor neighbours, and they were perfectly inoffensive 
towards the rest of the world. They who are wise unto sal- 
vation, know feehngly when they have done best, that their 
best works are worth nothing; but they who are conscious 
that they have lived inoffensively may have in that conscious- 
ness a reasonable ground of comfort. 

The apostle enjoins us to " eschew evil and do good." To 
do good is not in every one's power; and many who think 
they are doing it, may be grievously deceived forlack of judg- 
ment, and be doing evil the while instead, with the best in- 
tentions, but with sad consequences to others, and eventual 
sorrow for themselves. But it is in every one's power to 
eschew evil, so far as never to do wilful harm; and if we 
were all careful never unnecessarily to distress or disquiet 
those who are committed to our charge, or who must be af- 
fected by our conduct — if we made it a point of conscience 
never to disturb the peace, or diminish the happiness of oth- 
ers — the mass of moral evil by which we are surrounded 
would speedily be diminished, and with it no inconsiderable 
portion of those physical ones would be removed, which are 
the natural consequence and righteous punishment of our 
misdeeds. 



CHAPTER LXX. P. 1. 

SHOWING THAT ANY HONEST CvCCUPATION IS BETTER THAN NONE, 
BUT THAT OCCUPATIONS WHICH ARE DEEMED HONOURABLE ARE 
NOT ALWAYS HONEST. 

J'ai peine a concevoir pourquoi le plupart des hommes ont una si forte 
envie d'etre heureux, etune sigrande incapacite pour le devenir. — Voyages 
de Milord Ceton. 

" Happy," said Dr. Dove, " is the man, who having his 
whole time thrown upon his hands makes no worse use of 
it than to practice eight hours a day upon a bad fiddle." 
It was a sure evidence, he insisted, that Mr. Staniforth's 
frame of mind was harmonious ; the mental organ was in 
perfect repair, though the strings of the material instrument 
jarred; and he enjoyed the scientific delight which Han- 
del's composition gave him abstractedly, in its purity and 
essence. 

" There can now," says an American preacher,* " be no 
doubt of this truth because there have been so many proofs 

* Freeman's Eighteen Sermons. 



THE DOCTOR. 59 

of it ; that the man who retires completely from business, 
who is resolved to do nothing but enjoy himself, never at- 
tains the end at which he aims. If it is not mixed with 
other ingredients, no cup is so insipid, and at the same time 
so unhealthful, as the cup of pleasure. When the whole en- 
joyment of the day is to eat, and drink, and sleep, and talk, 
and visit, life becomes a burden too heavy to be supported by 
a feeble old man, and he soon sinks into the arms of spleen, 
or falls into the jaws of death." 

Alas ! it is neither so easy a thing, nor so agreeable a one 
as men commonly expect, to dispose of leisure, when they 
retire from the business of the world. Their old occupations 
cling to them, even when they hope that they have emanci- 
pated themselves. 

Go to any seaport town and you will see that the sea cap- 
tain who has retired upon his well-earned savings, sets up a 
weathercock in full view from his windows, and watches the 
variations of the wind as duly as when he was at sea, though 
no longer with the same anxiety. 

Every one who knows the story of the tallow chandler, 
who, having amassed a fortune, disposed of his business, and 
taken a house in the country, not far from London, that he 
might enjoy himself, after a few months trial of a holyday 
life, requested permission of his successor, to come into 
town, and assist him on melting days. I have heard of one 
who kept a retail spirit shop, and having in like manner re- 
tired from trade, used to employ himself by havmg one pun- 
cheon filled with water, and measuring it off by pints into an- 
other. I have also heard of a butcher in a small country 
town, who, some little time after he had left off business, in- 
formed his old customers that he meant to kill a lamb once a 
week, just for his amusement. 

There is no way of life to which the generality of men 
cannot conform themselves ; and it seems as if the more re- 
pugnance they may at first have had to overcome, the better 
at last they like the occupation. They grow insensible to 
the loudest and most discordant sounds, or remain only so far 
sensible of them, that the cessation will awaken them from 
sleep. The most offensive smells become pleasurable to 
them in time, even those which are produced by the most of- 
fensive substances. The temperature of a glasshouse is not 
only tolerable but agreeable to those who have their fiery oc- 
cupation there. Wisely and mercifully was this power of 
adaptation implanted in us for our good ; but in our imperfect 
and diseased society it is grievously perverted. We make 
the greater part of the evil circumstances in which we are 
placed ; and then we fit ourselves for those circumstances by 
a process of systematic degradation, the effect of which most 
people see in the classes below them, though they may not 



60 _ THE DOCTOR. 

be conscious that it is operating in a diflferent manner but with 
equal force upon iheaiselves. 

For there is but too much cause to conclude that our m.oral 
sense is more easily blunted than our physical sensations. 
Roman ladies delig-hted in seeing the gladiators bleed and die 
in the public theatre. Spanish ladies at this day clap their 
hands in exultation at spectacles which make English soldiers 
sicken and turn away. The most upright lawyer acquires a 
sort of Swiss conscience for professional use; he is soon 
taught that considerations of right and wrong have nothing 
to do with his brief, and that his business is to do the best 
he can for his client, however bad the case. If this went no 
further than to save a criminal from punishment, it might be 
defensible on the ground of humanity, and of charitable hope. 
But to plead with the whole force of an artful mind in fur- 
therance of a vexatious and malicious suit — and to resist a 
rightful claim with all the devices of legal subtlety, and all 
the technicalities of legal craft — I know not how he who 
considers this to be his duty towards his client can reconcile 
it with his duty towards his neighbour ; or how he thinks it 
will appear in the account he must one day render to the 
Lord for the talents which have been committed to his 
charge. 

There are persons indeed who have so far outgrown their 
catechism as to beheve that their only duty is to themselves; 
and who in the march of intellect have arrived at the con- 
venient conclusion that there is no account to be rendered 
after death. But they would resent any imputation upon 
their honour or their courage as an offence not to be for- 
given; audit is difficult therefore to understand how even 
such persons can undertake to plead the cause of a scoundrel 
in cases of seduction — how they can think that the accept- 
ance of a dirty fee is to justify them for cross-examining an 
injured and unhappy woman with the cruel wantonness of 
unnmnly insult, bruising the broken reed, and treating her as 
if she were as totally devoid of shame, as they themselves 
of decency and of humanity. That men should act thus, 
and be perfectly unconscious the while that they are acting 
a cowardly and rascally part — and that society should not 
punish them for it by looking upon them as men wiio have 
lost their caste, vv^ould be surprising if we did not too plainly 
see to what a degree the moral sen.^^:-. PiOt onl}'' of individuals, 
but of a whole community, may be corrupted. 

Physiologists have observed that men and dogs are the 
only creatures \vhose iinture can acconmodate itself to 
every climate, iiom the b' vmng sands of the desert to the 
shores and islands of the irozen ocean. And it is not in 
their physical nature alone that this power of accommodation 
is found. Dogs, who beyond all reasonable question have a 



THE DOCTOR. 61 

sense of duty, and fidelity, and affection towards their human 
associates — a sense altogether distinct from fear and selfish- 
ness — who will rush upon any danger at their master's bid- 
ding, and die brokenhearted beside his body or upon his 
grave — dogs, 1 say, who have this capacity of virtue, have 
nevertheless been trained to act with robbers against the 
traveller, and to hunt down human beings and devour them. 
But depravity sinks deeper than this in man; for the dog 
when thus deteriorated acts against no law natural or re- 
vealed, no moral sense ; he has no power of comparing good 
and evil, and choosing between them, but may be trained to 
either, and in either is performing his intelligible duty of 
obedience. 



CHAPTER LXXI. P. I. 

TRANSITION IN OUR NARRATIVE PREPARATORY TO A CHANGE IN 

THE doctor's life — A SAD STORV SUPPRESSED THE AUTHOR 

PROTESTS AGAINST PLAYING WITH THE FEELINGS OF HIS READ- 
ERS ALL ARE NOT MERRY THAT SEEM MIRTHFUL THE SCAF- 
FOLD A STAGE DON HODRIGO CALDERON THISTLEWOOD THE 

WORLD A MASQUERADE, BUT THE DOCTOR ALWAYS IN HIS OWN 
CHARACTER. 

This breaks no rule of order. 
- If order were infringed then should I flee 
From my chief purpose, and my mark should miss. 
Order is nature's beauty, and tlie way 
To order is by rules that art hath found. 

GWILLIM. 

The question "Who is the doctor 1" has now methinks 
been answered, though not fully, yet sufficiently for the pres- 
ent stage of our memorials, while he is still a bachelor, a 
single man, an imperfect individual, half only of the whole 
being which by the laws of nature, and of Christian polity, it 
was designed that man should become. 

The next question therefore that presents itself for con- 
sideration relates to that other, and, as he sometimes called 
it, belter half, which upon the union of the two moieties made 
him a whole man. 

Who was Mrs. DoveT 

The reader has been informed how my friend in his early 

manhood, when about to be a doctor, fell in love. Upon that 

part of his history I have related all that he communicated, 

which was all that could by me be known, and probably all 

13* 



62 THE DOCTOR. 

there was to know. From that time he never fell in love 
again ; nor did he ever run into it ; but as was formerly in- 
timated, he once caught the affection. The history of this 
attachment I heard from others ; he had suffered too deeply 
ever to speak of it himself; and having maturely considered 
the matter 1 have determined not to relate the circumstances. 
Suffice it to say, that he might at the same time have caught 
from the same person an insidious and mortal disease, if his 
constitution had been as susceptible of the one contagion as 
his heart was of the other. The tale is too painful to be told. 
There are authors enough in the world who delight in draw- 
ing tears ; there will always be young readers enough who 
are not unwilling to shed them ; and perhaps it may be whole- 
some for the young and happy upon whose tears there is no 
other call. 

Not that the author is to be admired, or even excused, 
who draws too largely upon our lachrymal glands. The 
pathetic is a string which may be touched by an unskilful 
hand, and which has often been played upon by an unfeel- 
ing one. 

For my own part, I wish to make my readers neither 
laugh nor weep. It is enough for me, if I may sometimes 
bring a gleam of sunshine upon thy brow, Pensoso ; and a 
watery one over thy sight, Buonallegro ; a smile upon Pen- 
serosa's lips, a dimple in Amanda's cheek, and some quiet 
tears, Sophronia, into those mild eyes, which have shed so 
many scalding ones ! When my subject leads me to dis- 
tressful scenes, it will, as Southey says, not be 

my purpose e'er to entertain 
The heart with useless grief; but, as I may, 
Blend in my calm and meditative strain 
Consolatory thoughts, the balm for real pain.* 

The maxim that an author who desires to make us weep 
must be affected himself by what he writes, is too trite to be 
repeated in its original language. Both authors and actors, 
however, can produce this effect without eliciting a spark 
of feeling from their own hearts ; and what perhaps may 
be deemed more remarkable, they can with the same suc- 
cess excite merriment in others, without partaking of it in 
the slightest degree themselves. No man ever made his 
contemporaries laugh more heartily than Scarron, whose 
bodily sufferings were such that he wished for himself 

" a. toute heure 
Ou la mort, ou sante meilleure :" 

and who describes himself in his epistle to Sarazin, as 

* Tale of Paraguay. 



THE DOCTOR. 63 

" Un Pauvret 
Tres-maigret ; 
Au col tors, 
Dont le corps 
Tout tortu, 
Tout bossu, 
Suranne, ^ 
Decharne, 
Est reduit 
Jour et nuit, 
A souflfrir 
Sans guerir 
Des tourmens 
Vehemens." 

It may be said perhaps that Scarron's disposition was 
eminently cheerful, and that by indulging in buffoonery he 
produced in himself a pleasurable excitement not unlike that 
which others seek from strong liquors, or from opium ; and 
therefore that his exaftiple tends to invalidate the assertion 
in support of which it was adduced. This is a plausible ob- 
jection ; and 1 am far from undervalumg the philosophy of 
Pantagruelism, and from denying that its effects may, and 
are likely to be as salutary, as any that were ever produced 
by the proud doctrines of the porch. But I question Scar- 
ron's right to the appellation of a Pantagruelist ; his humour 
had neither the heighth nor the depth of that philosophy. 

There is a well-known anecdote of a physician, who being 
called in to an unknown patient, found him suffering under 
the deepest depression of mind, without any discoverable 
disease, or other assignable cause. The physician advised 
him to seek for cheerful objects, and recommended him es- 
pecially to go to the theatre and see a famous actor then in 
the meridian of his powers, whose comic talents were unri- 
valled. Alas ! the comedian who kept crowded theatres in 
a roar was this poor hypochondriac himself! 

The state of mind in which such men play their part, 
whether as authors or actors, was confessed in a letter 
written from Yarmouth jail to the doctor's friend Miller, by 
a then well-known performer in this line, George Alexander 
Stevens. He wrote to describe his distress in prison, and 
to request that Miller would endeavour to make a small 
collection for him some night at a concert ; and he told his 
sad tale sportively. But breaking off that strain he said, 
" You may think I can have no sense, that while I am thus 
wretched I should offer at ridicule ! But, sir, people consti- 
tuted like me, with a disproportionate levity of spirits, are 
always most merry when they are most miserable ; and 
quicken like the eyes of the consumptive, which are always 
brightest the nearer a patient approaches to dissolution." 

It is one thing to jest, it is another to be mirthful. Sir 
Thomas More jested as he ascended the scaffold. In case*? 
of violent death, and especially upon an unjust sentence. 



64 THE DOCTOR. 

this is not surprising- ; because the sufferer has not been 
weakened by a wasting malady, and is in a state of high 
mental excitement and exertion. But even when dissolu- 
tion comes in the course of nature, there are instances of 
men who have died with a jest upon their lips. Garci San- 
chez de Badajoz when he was at the pomt of death desired 
that he might be dressed in the habit of St. Francis ; this 
IS accordingly done, and over the Franciscan frock they 
t on his habit of Santiago, for he was a knight of that 
er. It was a point of devotion with him to wear the one 
ss, a point of honour to wear the other ; but looking at 
iiuHself in this double attire, he said to those who sur- 
rounded his deathbed, " The Lord will say to me presently, 
' My friend Garci Sanchez, you come very well wrapped up !' 
{nmy arropado :) and I shall reply, ' Lord, it is no wonder, for 
it was winter when I set off.' " ^ 

The author who relates this anecdote, remarks that o 
morrer com graqa he muyto horn, e com graqas he muyto mao : 
the observation is good but untranslatable, because it plays 
upon the word which means grace as well as wit. The 
anecdote itself is an example of the ruling humour " strong 
in death ;" perhaps also of that pride or vanity, call it which 
we will, which so often, when mind and body have not 
yielded to natural decay, or been broken down by suffering, 
clings to the last in those whom it has strongly possessed. 
Don Rodrigo Calderon, whose fall and exemplary contrition 
served as a favourite topic for the poets of his day, wore 
a Franciscan habit at his execution, as an outward and vis- 
ible sign of penitence and humiUation ; as he ascended the 
scafibld, he lifted the skirts of the habit with such an air 
that his attendant confessor thought it necessary to re- 
prove him for such an instance of ill-timed regard to his 
appearance. Don Rodrigo excused himself by saying that 
he had all his life carried himself gracefully ! 

The author by whom this is related calls it an instance 
of illustrious hypocrisy. In my judgment the father con- 
fessor who gave occasion for it deserves a censure far more 
than the penitent sufferer. The movement beyond all doubt 
was purely habitual, as much so as the act of hfting his feet 
to ascend the steps of the scaffold ; but the undeserved re- 
proof made him feel how curiously whatever he did was 
remarked ; and that consciousness reminded him that he 
had a part to support, when his whole thoughts would oth- 
erwise have been far differently directed. 

A personage in one of Webster's plays says — 

" I knew a man that was to lose his head 
Feed with an excellent good appetite 
To strengthen his heart, scarce half an hour before, 
And if he did, it only was to speak." 



THE DOCTOR. 65 

Probably the dramatist alluded to some well-known fact 
which was at that time of recent occurrence. When the 
desperate and atrocious traitor Thistlewood was on the 
scaffold, his demeanour was that of a man who was resolved 
boldly to meet the fate he had deserved ; in the few words 
which were exchanged between him and his fellow-criminals 
he observed, that the grand question whether or not the soul 
was immortal, would soon be solved for them. No expres- 
sion of hope escaped him, no breathing of repentance; no 
spark of grace appeared. Yet, (it is a fact which, whether it 
be more consolatory or awful, ought to be known,) on the 
night after the sentence, and preceding his execution, while 
he supposed that the person who was appointed to watch 
him in his cell was asleep, this miserable man was seen by 
that person repeatedly to rise upon his knees, and heard re- 
peatedly calling upon Christ his Saviour, to have mercy upon 
him, and to forgive him his sins ! 

All men and women are verily, as Shakspeare has said of 
them, merely players — when we see them upon the stage of 
the world ; that is when they are seen anywhere except in the 
freedom and undressed intimacy of private life. There is a 
wide difference indeed in the performers, as there is at a 
masquerade, between those who assume a character, and 
those who wear dominos ; some play off the agreeable, or 
the disagreeable, for the sake of attracting notice ; others 
retire as it were into themselves ; but you can judge as little 
of the one as of the other. It is even possible to be ac- 
quainted with a man long and familiarly, and as we may sup- 
pose intimately, and yet not to know him thoroughly or well. 
There may be parts of his character with which we have 
never come in contact — recesses which have never been 
opened to us— springs upon which we have never touched. 
Many there are v/ho can keep their vices secret ; would that 
all bad men had sense and shame enough to do so, or were 
compelled to it by the fear of public opinion ! Shame of a 
very different nature — a moral shamefacedness — which if 
not itself an instinctive virtue, is near akin to one, makes 
those who are endowed with the best and highest feehngs 
conceal them from all common eyes ; and for our perfor- 
mance of religious duties— our manifestations of piety— we 
have been warned that what of this kind is done to be seen 
of men, will not be rewarded openly before men and angels 
at the last. 

If I knew my venerable friend better than I ever knew 
any other man, it was because he was in many respects unlike 
other men, and in few points more unUke them than in this, 
that he always appeared what he was — neither better nor 
worse. With a discursive intellect, and a fantastic imagina- 
tion, he retained his simplicity of heart. He had kept that 



66 THE DOCTOR. 

heart unspotted from the world ; his father's blessing was 
upon him, and he prized it beyond all that the world could 
have bestowed. Crowe says of us — 

" Our better mind 
Is as a Sunday's garment, then put on 
When we have naught to do ; but at our work 
We wear a worse for thrift !" 

It was not so with him ; his better mind was not as a gar- 
ment, to be put on and off at pleasure ; it was like its plu- 
mage to a bird, its beauty and its fragrance to a flower, ex- 
cept that it was not liable to be ruffled, nor to fade, nor to 
exhale and pass away. His mind was like a peacock, al- 
ways in full attire ; it was only at times, indeed, (to pursue 
the similitude,) that he expanded and displayed it; but its 
richness and variety never could be concealed from those who 
had eyes to see them. 

His sweetest mind 
'Tween mildness tempered and low courtesy, 

Could leave as soon to be, as not be kind. 
Churlish despite ne'er looked from his calm eye, 

Much less commanded in his genlle heart ; 
To baser men fair looks he would impart ; 

Nor could he cloak ill thoughts in complimental art.* 

What he was in boyhood has been seen, and something also 
of his manlier years ; but as yet little of the ripe fruits of his 
intellectual autumn have been set before the readers. No 
such banquet was promised them as that with which they 
are to be regaled. " The booksellers," says Somner the 
antiquary, in an unpublished letter to Dugdale, " afl'ect a 
great deal of title as advantageous for the sale ; but judicious 
men dislike it, as savouring of too much ostentation, and sus- 
pecting the wine is not good where so much bush is hung 
out." Somebody, I forget who, wrote a book upon the title 
of books, regarding the title as a most important part of the 
composition. The bookseller's fashion of which Somner 
speaks, has long been obsolete ; mine is a brief title promis- 
ing little, but intending much. It specifies only the Doctor ; 
but his gravities and his levities, his opinions of men and 
things, his speculations moral and political, physical and spir- 
itual, his philosophy and his religion, each blendmg with 
each, and all with all, these are comprised in the &c. of my 
title page — these and his Pantagruelism to boot. When I 
meditate upon these I may exclaim with the poet — 

Mnemosyne hath kiss'd the kingly Jove, 
And entertained a feast within my brain, f 

* Phineas Fletcher, 186, f Robert Green. 



THE DOCTOR. 67 

These I shall produce for the entertainment of the idle reader, 
and for the recreation of the busy one ; for the amusement 
of the young, and the contentment of the old ; for the pleas- 
ure of the wise, and the approbation of the good ; and these 
when produced will be the monument of Daniel Dove, Of 
such a man it may indeed be said that he 

Is his own marble ; and his merit can 
Cut him to any figure, and express 
More art than death's cathedral palaces, 
Where royal ashes keep their court !* 

Some of my contemporaries may remember a story once 
current at Cambridge, of a luckless undergraduate, who, 
being examined for his degree, and failing in every subject 
upon which he was tried, complained that he had not been 
questioned upon the things which he knew. Upon which the 
examining master, moved less to compassion by the impene- 
trable dulness of the man than to anger by his unreasonable 
complaint, tore off about an inch of paper, and pushing it to- 
wards him, desired him to write upon that all he knew ! 

And yet bulky books are composed, or compiled by men 
who know as little as this poor empty individual. Tracts, 
and treatises, and tomes may be, and are written by persons 
to whom the smallest square sheet of delicate note paper, 
rose-coloured, or green, or blue, with its embossed border, 
manufactured expressly for ladies' fingers and crow quills, 
would afford ample room, and verge enough, for expound- 
ing the sum total of their knowledge upon the subject where- 
on they undertake to enlighten the public. 

Were it possible for me to pour out all that I have taken in 
from him, of whose accumulated stores I, alas ! am now the 
sole living repository, I know not to what extent the pre- 
cious reminiscences might run. 

Per sua gratia singulare 
Par ch' io habbi nel capo una seguenza, 
Una fontana, un fiume, un lago, un mare, 

Id est un pantanaccio d'eloquenza.-f 

Sidronius Hosschius has supplied me with a simile for 
this stream of recollections. 

" ^stuat et cursu nunquam cessante laborat 

Eridanus, fessis irrequietus aquis ; 
Spumeus it, fervensque, undamque supervenit unda ; 

Haec illam, sed et hanc non minus ista premit. 
Volvitur, et volvit pariter, motuque perenni 

Truditur a fluctu posteriore prior." 

* Middleton. f Matteo Franzesi. 



68 THE DOCTOR. 

As I shall proceed 

" Excipiet curam nova cura, laborque laborem, 
Nee minus exhausto quod superabit erit." 

But for stores which in this way have been received, the 
best compacted memory is like a sieve ; more of necessity 
slips through than stops upon the way; and well is it, if that 
which is of most value be what remains behind. 1 have 
pledged myself, therefore, to no more than I can perform ; 
and this the reader shall have within reasonable limits, and 
in due time, provided the performance be not prevented by 
any of the evils incident to human life. 

At present, my business is to answer the question " Who 
was Mrs. Dove ?" 



CHAPTER LXXII. P. 1. 

IN WHICH THE FOURTH OF THE QUESTIONS PROPOSED IN CHAPTER 
II. P. I. IS BEGUN TO BE ANSWERED ; SOME OBSERVATIONS 
UPON ANCESTRY ARE INTRODUCED, AND THE READER IS IN- 
FORMED WHY THE AUTHOR DOES NOT WEAR A CAP AND BELLS 

Boast not the titles of your ancestors, ' 

Brave youths ! they're their possessions, none of j'ours. 

When your own virtues equall'd have their names, 

'Twill be but fair to lean upon their fames, 

For they are strong supporters ; but till then 

The greatest are but growing gentlemen. 

Ben Jonson. 

Who was Mrs. Dove 1 

A woman of the oldest family in this or any other king- 
dom, for she was beyond all doubt a legitimate descendant 
of Adam. Her husband perhaps might have rather said that 
she was a daughter of Eve. But he would have said it with 
a smile of playfulness, not of scorn. 

To trace her descent somewhat lower, and bring it nearer 
to the stock of the Courtenays, the Howards, the Manriques, 
the Bourbons, and Thundertentronks, she was a descendant 
of Noah, and of his eldest son Japhet. She was allied to 
Ham, however, in another way besides this remote niece- 
ship. 

As how I pray you, sir 1 

Her maiden name was Bacon. 

Grave sir, be not disconcerted. I hope you have no an- 



THE DOCTOR. 69 

tipathy to s'ach things : or at least that they do not act upon 
you, as the notes of a bagpipe are said to act upon certain 
persons whose unfortunate idiosyncrasy exposes them to 
very unpleasant effects from the sound. 

Mr. Critickin — for as there is a diminutive for cat, so 
should there be for critic — I defy you ! Before I can be 
afraid of your claws, you must leave off biting your nails. 

I have something better to say to the reader, who follows 
wherever 1 lead up and down, high and low, to the hill and 
to the valley, contented with his guide, and enjoying the 
prospect which I show him in all its parts, in the detail and 
in the whole, in the foreground and home scene, as well as 
in the Pisgah view. I will tell him before the chapter is fin- 
ished, why I do not wear a cap and bells. 

To you, my lady, who may imagine that Miss Bacon was 
not of a good family, (Lord Verulam's line, as you very 
properly remark, being extinct,) I beg leave to observe that 
she was certainly a cousin of your own ; somewhere within 
the tenth and twentieth degrees, if not nearer. And this 1 
proceed to prove. 

Every person has two immediate parents, four ancestors 
in the second degree, eight in the third, and so the pedi- 
gree ascends, doubling at every step, till in the twentieth 
generation, he has no fewer than one million, thirty thous 
and, eight hundred and ninety-six 

great, great, great, 

great, great, great, 

great, great, great, 

great, great, great, 

great, great, great, 

great, great, great 
grandfathers and grandmothers. Therefore, my lady, I con 
ceive it to be absolutely certain, that under the Plantagenets, if 
not in the time of the Tudors some of your ancestors must 
have been equally ancestors of Miss Deborah Bacon. 

'* At the conquest," says Sir Richard Philips, " the ancestry 
of every one of the English people was the whole population 
of England ; while on the other hand, every one having chil- 
dren at that time, was the direct progenitor of the whole of 
the Hving race." 

The reflecting reader sees at once that it must be so. 
" Plato ait, Neminem regem non ex servis esse oriendum, 
neiuinem non servum ex regibus. Omnia ista longa varietas 
miscuit, et sursum deorsum fortuna versavit. Quis ergo gen- 
erosus 1 ad virtutem bene a natura compositus. Hoc unum 
est intuendum : ahoqui, si ad Vetera revocas, nemo non inde 
est, ante quod nihil est."* And the erudite Ihre in the Proe 
mium to his invaluable Glossary, says, *' Ut aliquoto cogna- 

* Seneca. 



70 THE DOCTOR. 

tioiiis gradii, sed per nionumentoruin defectum hodie inexpli- 
cabile, omiies homines inter se connexi sunt." 

Now then to the gentle reader. The reason whyT do not 
wear a cap and bells is this : — 

There are male caps of five kinds which are worn at pres- 
ent in this knig-dom : to wit, the military cap, the collegiate 
cap, the jockey cap, the travelling cap, and the night cap. Ob- 
serve, reader, I said kinds, that is to say in scientific lan- 
guage genera — for the species and varieties are numerous, es- 
pecially in the former genus. 

1 am not a soldier ; and having long been weaned from 
Alma Mater, of course have left off my college cap. The 

gentlemen of the hunt would object to my going out 

with the bells on, it would be likely to frighten their horses ; 
and were I to attempt it, it might involve me in unpleasant 
disputes, which might possibly lead to more unpleasant con- 
sequences. To my travelling cap the bells would be an in- 
convenient appendage ; nor would they be a whit more com- 
fortable upon my night cap. Besides, my wife might object 
to them. 

It follows that if 1 would wear a cap and bells, 1 must have 
a cap made on purpose. But this would be rendering my- 
self singular ; and of all things, a wise man will most avoid 
any ostentatious appearance of singularity. 

Now 1 am certainly not singular in playing the fool with- 
out one. 

And, indeed, if I possessed such a cap, it would not be 
proper to wear it in this part of my history. 



CHAPTER LXXIII. P. I. 

RASH MARRIAGES — AN EARLY WIDOWHOOD AFFLICTION RENDERED 

A BLESSING TO THE SUFFERER ; AND TWO ORPHANS LEFT, 
THOUGH NOT DESTITUTE, YET FRIENDLESS. 

Love built a stately house ; where Fortune came, 

And spinning fancies, she was heard to say- 
That her fine cobwebs did support the frame : 
Whereas they were supported by the same. 
But Wisdom quickly swept them all away. 

Herbert. 

Mrs. Dove was the only child of a clergyman who held a 
small vicarage in the West Riding. Leonard Bacon her fa- 
ther had been left an orphan in early youth. He had some 
wealthy relations, by whose contributions he was placed at 
an endf wed grammar school in the country, and having 



THE DOCTOR. 71 

tlirougii their inliueiice gained a scholarship to which his own 
deserts mitrht have entitled him, they continued to assist 
hun — sparingly enough indeed — at the university, till he suc- 
ceeded to a fellowship. Leonard was made of nature's 
finest clay, and nature had tempered it with the choicest 
dews of Heaven. 

He had a female cousin about three years younger than 
himself, and in like manner an orphan, equally destitute, but 
far more forlorn. Man iiath a fleece about him which enables 
him to bear the bufFetings of the storm ; but woman when 
young, and lovely, and poor, is as a shorn lamb for which the 
wind has not been tempered. 

Leonard's father and Margaret's had been bosom friends. 
They were subalterns in the same regiment, and being for a 
long time stationed at Salisbury had t)ecome intimate at the 
house of Mr. Trewbody, a gentleman of one of the oldest 
families in Wiltshire. Mr. Trewbody had three daughters. 
Melicent, the eldest, was a celebrated beauty, and the know- 
ledge of this had not tended to improve a detestable temper. 
The two youngest, Deborah and Margaret, were lively, good 
natured, thoughtless, and attractive. They danced with the 
two lieutenants, played to them on the spinnet, sung with 
them, and laughed with them — till this mirthful intercourse be 
came serious, and knowing that it would be impossible to ob- 
tain their father's consent, they married the men of their 
hearts without it. Palmer and Bacon were both without for- 
tune, and without any other means of subsistence than their 
commissions. For four years they were as happy as love 
could make them ; at the end of that time Palmer was seized 
with an infectious fever. Deborah was then far advanced 
in pregnancy, and no solicitations could induce Bacon to 
keep from his friend's bedside. The disease proved fatal; it 
communicated to Bacon and his wife, the former only sur- 
vived his friend ten days, and he and Margaret were laid in 
the same grave. They left an only boy of three years old, 
and in less than a month the widow of Palmer was deliv- 
ered of a daughter. 

In the first impulse of anger at the flight of his daughters, 
and the degradation of his family, (for Bacon was the son of 
a tradesman, and Palmer was nobody knew who,) Mr. Trew- 
body had made his will, and left the whole sum which he had 
designed for his three daughters, to the eldest. Whether 
the situation of Margaret and the two orphans might have 
touched him is perhaps doubtful — for the family were ei- 
ther lighthearted, or hardliearted, and his heart was of 
the hard sort ; but he died suddenly a few months before 
his sons-in-law. The only son, Trewman Trewbody, Esq., 
a Wiltshire fox-hunter Hke his father, succeeded to the es- 
tate ; and as he and his eldest sister hated each other 
cordially. Miss Melicent left the manorhouse and established 



72 THE DOCTOR. 

herself in the Close at Salisbury, where she lived in that 
style which a portion of 6000/. enabled her in those days 
to support. 

The circumstance which might appear so greatly to have 
aggravated Mrs. Palmer's distress, if such distress be capable 
of aggravation, prevented her perhaps from eventually sink- 
ing under it. If the birth of her child was no alleviation of 
her sorrow, it brought with it new feelings, new duties, new 
cause for exertion, and new strength for it. She wrote to 
Mehcent and to her brother, simply stating her own destitute 
situation, and that of the orphan Leonard ; she believed that 
their pride would not suffer them either to let her starve or 
go to the parish for support, and in this she was not disap- 
pointed. An answer was returned by Miss Trewbody in- 
forming her that she had nobody to thank but herself for her 
misfortunes ; but that notwithstanding the disgrace which 
she hadbrougljt upon the family she might expect an annual 
allowance of ten pounds from the writer, and a like sum 
from her brother ; upon this she must retire into some ob- 
scure part of the country, and pray God to forgive her for the 
offence she had committed in marrymg beneath her birth and 
against her father's consent. 

Mrs. Palmer had also written to the friends of Lieutenant 
Bacon — her own husband had none who could assist her. 
She expressed her willingness and her anxiety to have the 
care of her sister's orphan, but represented her forlorn state. 
They behaved more liberally than her own kin had done, 
and promised five pounds a year as long as the boy should 
require it. With this and her pension she took a cottage in 
a retired village. Grief had acted upon her heart like the 
rod of Moses upon the rock in the desert ; it had opened it, 
and the well spring of piety had gushed forth. Affliction 
made her religious, and religion brought with it consolation, 
and comfort, and joy. Leonard became as dear to her as 
Margaret. The sense of duty educed a pleasure from every 
privation to which she subjected herself for the sake of econ- 
omy ; and in endeavouring to fulfil her duties in that state 
of life to which it had pleased God to call her, she was hap- 
pier than she had ever been in her father's house, and not 
less so than in her marriage state. Her happiness indeed 
was different in kind, but it was higher in degree. For the 
sake of these dear children she was content to live, and even 
prayed for life ; while if it had respected herself only, death 
had become to her rather an ODJect of desire than of dread. 
In this manner she lived seven years after the loss of her 
husband, and was then carried off" by an acute disease, to 
the irreparable loss of the orphans, who were thus orphaned 
indeed. 



THE DOCTOR. 73 



CHAPTER LXXIV. P. I. 

A iADY DESCRIBED WHOSE SINGLE LIFE WAS NO BLESSEDNESS 

ZITHER TO HERSELF OR OTHERS A VERACIOUS EPITAPH AND 

AN APPROPRIATE MONUMENT. 

Beauty ! my lord — 'tis the worst part of woman ! 
A weak, poor thing, assaulted every hour 
By creeping minutes of defacing time ; 
A superficies which each breath of care 
Blasts off; and every humorous stream of grief 
Which flows from forth these fountains of our eyes 
Washeth away, as rain doth winter's snow. 

GOFF. 

Miss Trewbody behaved with perfect propriety upon the 
news of her sister's death. She closed her front windows 
for two days ; received no visiters for a week ; was much 
indisposed, but resigned to the will of Providence, in reply to 
messages of condolence ; put her servants in mourning, and 
sent for Margaret that she might do her duty to her sister's 
child by breeding her up under her own eye. Poor Margaret 
was transferred from the stone floor of her mother's cottage 
to the Turkey carpet of her aunt's parlour. She was too 
young to comprehend at once the whole evil of the exchange ; 
but she learned to feel and understand it during years of bitter 
dependance, unalleviated by any hope, except that of one 
day seeing Leonard, the only creature on earth whom she 
remembered with affection. 

Seven years elapsed, and during all those years Leonard 
was left to pass his holydays, summer and winter, at the 
grammar school where he had been placed at Mrs. Palmer's 
death : for although the master regularly transmitted with 
his half-yearly bill the most favourable accounts of his dis- 
position and general conduct, as well as of his progress in 
learning, no wish to see the boy had ever arisen in the hearts 
of his nearest relations ; and no feeling of kindness, or sense 
of decent humanity, had ever induced either the fox-hunter 
Trewman or Melicent his sister to invite him for midsummer 
or Christmas. At length in the seventh year a letter an- 
nounced that his school education was completed, and that 

he was elected to a scholarship at College, Oxford, 

which scholarship would entitle him to a fellowship in due 
course of time ; in the intervening years some little assistance 
from his liberal benefactors would be required; and the liber- 
ality of those kind friends would be well bestowed upon a 



74 THE DOCTOR. 

youth who bade so fair to do honour to himself, and to reflect 

no disgrace upon his honourable connections. The head of the 
family promised his part with an ungracious expression of 
satisfaction at thinking that " thank God there would soon be 
an end of these demands upon him." Miss Trewbody signi- 
fied her assent in the same amiable and religious spirit. 
However much her sister had disgraced her family, she re- 
plied, " please God it should never be said that she refused 
to do her duty." 

The whole sum which these wealthy relations contributed 
was not very heavy — an annual ten pounds each : but they 
contrived to make their nephew feel the weight of every 
separate portion. The squire's half came always with a brief 
note desiring that the receipt of the enclosed sum might be 
acknowledged without delay — not a word of kindness or 
courtesy accompanied it ; and Miss Trewbody never failed to 
administer with her remittance a few edifying remarks upon 
the folly of his mother in marrying beneath herself; and the 
improper conduct of his father in connecting himself with a 
woman of family, against the consent of her relations, the 
consequence of which was that he had left a child dependan 
upon those relations for support. Leonard received these 
pleasant preparations of charity only at distant intervals, when 
he regularly expected them, with his half-yearly allowance. 
But Margaret, meantime, was dieted upon the food of bitter- 
ness without one circumstance to relieve the misery of her 
situation. 

At the time of which I am now speaking. Miss Trewbody 
was a maiden lady of forty-seven, in the highest state of 
preservation. The whole business of her life had been to 
take care of a fine person, and in this she had succeeded 
admirably. Her library consisted of two books ; Nelson's 
Festivals and Fasts was one, the other was " The Queen's 
Cabinet unlocked ;" and there was not a cosmetic in the latter 
which she had not faithfully prepared. Thus by means, as 
she believed, of distilled waters of various kinds, May dew, 
and buttermilk, her skin retained its beautiful texture still, 
and much of its smoothness ; and she knew at times how to 
give it the appearance of that brilliancy which it had lost. 
But that was a profound secret. Miss Trewbody, remember- 
ing the example of Jezebel, ahvays felt conscious that she 
was committing a sin when she took the rougebox in her 
hand, and generally ejaculated in alow voice, " The Lord for- 
give me !" when she laid it down: but looking in the glass at 
the same time, she indulged a hope that the nature of the 
temptation might be considered as an excuse for the trans- 
gression. Her other great business was to observe with the 
utmost precision all the punctilios of her situation in life 
and the time which «'as not devoted to one or other of these 
worthy occupations, was employed in scolding her servants, 



THE DOCTOR. 75 

dnd tormenting her niece. This employment, for it was so 
habitual that it deserved that name, agreed excelh ntly with 
her constitution. She was troubled with no acrid humours, 
no fits of bile, no diseases of the spleen, no vapours or hys- 
terics. The morbid matter was all collected in her temper, 
and found a regular vent at her tongue. This kept the lungs 
in vigorous health. Nay, it even seemed to supply the place 
of wholesome exercise, and to stimulate the system like a 
perpetual blister ; with this peculiar advantage, that instead 
of an inconvenience it was a pleasure to herself, and all the 
annoyance was to her dependants. 

Miss Trewbody lies buried in the cathedral at Salisbury, 
where a monument was erected to her memory worthy of 
remembrance itself for its appropriate inscription and accom- 
paniments. The epitaph recorded her as a woman eminently 
pious, virtuous, and charitable, who lived universally re- 
spected, and died sincerely lamented by all who had the hap- 
piness of knowing her. This inscription was upon a marble 
shield supported by two Cupids, who bent their heads over 
the edge, with marble tears larger than gray pease, and 
something of the same colour, upon their cheeks. These 
were the only tears which her death occasioned, and the 
only Cupids with whom she had ever any concern. 



CHAPTER LXXV. P. I. 

4 
A SCENE WHICH WILL PUT SOME OF THOSE READERS WHO HAVE 
BEEN MOST IMPATIENT WITH THE AUTHOR, IN THE BEST HU- 
MOUR WITH HIM. 

There is no argument of more antiquity and elegancy than is the mattei 
of love ; for it seems to be as old as the world, and to bear date from the 
first time that man and woman was : therefore in this, as in the finest 
metal, the freshest wits have in all ages shown their best workmanship. 
— Robert Wilmot. 

When Leonard had resided three years at Oxford, one of 
his college friends invited him to pass the long vacation at 
his father's house, which happened to be within an easy ride 
of Salisbury. One morning, therefore, he rode to that city, 
rung at Miss Trewbody's door, and having sent in his name, 
was admitted into the parlour, where there was no one to 
receive him, while Miss Trewbody adjusted her headdress 
at the toilet, before she made her appearance. Her feelings 
while she was thus employed were not of the pleasantest 
kind towards this unexpected guest ; and she was prepared 



76 THE DOCTOR. 

to accost him with a reproof for his extravagance in undo 
taking so long a journey, and with some mortifying questions 
concerning the business which brought him there. But this 
amiable intention was put to flight, when Leonard, as soon 
as she entered the room, informed her that having accepted 
an invitation into that neighbourhood from his friend and 
fellow-collegian, the son of Sir Lambert Bowles, he had 
taken the earliest opportunity of coming to pay his respects 
to her, and acknowledging his obligations, as bound alike by 
duty and inclination. The name of Sir Lambert Bowles 
acted upon Miss Trewbody like a charm ; and its mollifying 
effect was not a little aided by the tone of her nephew's ad- 
dress, and the sight of a fine youth in the first bloom of 
manhood, whose appearance and manners were such that 
she could not be surprised at the introduction he had obtained 
into one of the first families in the county. The scowl, 
therefore, which she brought into the room upon her brow 
passed instantly away, and was succeeded by so gracious an 
aspect, that Leonard, if he had not divined the cause, might 
have mistaken this gleam of sunshine for fair weather. 

A cause which Miss Trewbody could not possibly suspect, 
had rendered her nephew's address thus conciliatory. Had 
he expected to see no other person in that house, the visit 
would have been performed as an irksome obligation, and his 
manner would have appeared as cold and formal as the re- 
ception which he anticipated. But Leonard had not forgot- 
ten the playmate and companion with w^hom the happy 
years of his childhood had been passed. Young as he was at 
their separation, his character had taken its stamp during 
those peaceful years, and the impression which it then re- 
ceived was indelible. Hitherto hope had never been to him 
so delightful as memory. His thoughts wandered back into 
the past more frequently than they took flight into the future ; 
and the favourite form which his imagination called up was 
that of the sw^eet child, who in winter partook of his bench 
in the chimney corner, and in summer sat w^ith him in the 
porch, and strung the fallen blossoms of jessamine upon 
stalks of grass. The snowdrop and the crocus reminded 
him of their little garden, the primrose of their sunny or- 
chard bank, and the bluebells and the cowslip, of the fields 
wherein they were allowed to run wild and gather them in 
the merry month of May. Such as she then was, he saw 
her frequently in sleep, with her blue eyes and rosy cheeks, 
and flaxen curls : and in his day dreams he sometimes pic- 
tured her to himself such as he supposed she now might be, 
and dressed up the image with all the magic of ideal beauty. 
His heart, therefore, was at his lips when he inquired for his 
cousin. It was not without something like fear and an ap- 
prehension of disappointment that he awaited her appearance ; 
and he was secretly condemning himself for the romantic folly 



THE DOCTOR. 77 

which he had encouraged, when the door opened and a crea- 
ture came in — less radiant indeed, but more winning than his 
fancy had created, for the loveliness of earth and reality was 
about her. 

" Margaret," said Miss Trewbody, " do you remember 
your cousin Leonard V 

Before she could answer, Leonard had taken her hand. 
" 'Tis a long while, Margaret, since we parted ! — ten years ! 
But 1 have not forgotten the parting — nor the blessed days of 
our childhood." 

She stood trembling like an aspen leaf, and looked wist- 
fully in his face for a moment, then hung down her head, 
without power to utter a word in reply. But he felt her 
tears fall fast upon his hand, and felt also that she returned 
its pressure. 

Leonard had some difficulty to command himself, so as to 
bear a part in conversation with his aunt, and keep his eyes 
and his thoughts from wandering. He accepted, however, 
her invitation to stay and dine with her with undissembled 
satisfaction, and the pleasure was not a little heightened 
when she left the room to give some necessary orders in 
consequence. Margaret still sat trembling and in silence. 
He took her hand, pressed it to his lips, and said in a low, 
earnest voice, " Dear, dear Margaret !" She raised her eyes, 
and fixing them upon him with one of those looks, the perfect 
remembrance of which can never be effaced from the heart 
to which they have been addressed, replied in a lower but 
not less earnest tone, '* Dear Leonard I" and from that mo- 
ment their lot was sealed for time and for eternity. 



CHAPTER LXXVL P. L 

A STORY CONCERNING CUPm, WHICH NOT ONE READER IN TEN 
THOUSAND HAS EVER HEARD BEFORE ; A DEFENCE OF LOVE, 
WHICH WILL BE VERV SATISFACTORY TO THE LADIES. 

They do lie, 
Lie grossly who say love is blind— by him 
And Heaven they !ie ! he has a sight can pierce 
Through ivory, as clear as it were horn, 
And reach its object. 

D&AUMONT and Fletcher. 

The stoics who called our good affections eupathies, did 
not manage those affections as well ss they understood them. 
They kept them under too severe \ discipline, and erro- 
neously believed that the best way % strengthen the heart 
14 



78 THE DOCTOR. 

was by hardening it. The monks carried this error to its 
utmost extent, falling- indeed into the impious absurdity, that 
our eupathies are sinful in themselves. The monks have 
been called the stoics of Christianity ; but the philosophy 
the cloister, can no more bear comparison with that of 
the porch, than stoicism itself with Christianity, pure 
and undefiled. Van Helmont compares even the Francis- 
cans with the stoics, *■'■ paucis mutatis,'''' he says, ^^videbam 
Cap ucinum esse stoicum Christianvm.'''' He might have found 
a closer parallel for them in the Cynics, both for their filth 
and their extravagance. And here I will relate a rabbinical 
tradition. 

On a time the chiefs of the synagogue, being mighty in 
prayer, obtained of the Lord, that the evil spirit who had 
seduced the Jews to commit idolatry, and had brought other 
nations against them, to overthrow their city, and destroy 
the temple, should be delivered into their hands for punish- 
ment; when, by advice of Zachariah the prophet, they put- 
him in a leaden vessel, and secured him there with a weight 
of lead upon his face. By this sort of peine forte et dure, 
they laid him so effectually that he has never appeared since. 
Pursuing then their supplications while the ear of Heaven 
was open, they entreated that another evil spirit, by whom 
the people had continually been led astray, might in like 
manner be put into their power. This prayer also was 
granted ; and the demon with whom poets, lovers, and ladies 
are familiar, by his heathen name of Cupid, was delivered up 
to them. 

foUe per lui 
Tutco 11 mondo si fa. Perisca Amore, 
E saggio ogn m sara.* 

The prophet Zachariah warned them not to be too hasty in 
putting him to death, for fear of the consequences : — 

" You shall see 
A fine confusion in the country ; mark it !" 

But the prophet's counsel was as vain as the wise courtier's in 
Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy, who remonstrated against 
the decree for demolishing Cupid's altars. They disregarded 
his advice: because they were determined upon destroying 
the enemy now that they had him in their power; and they 
bound their prisoner fast in chains, while they deliberated 
by what death he should die. These deliberations lasted 
three days ; on the third day it happened that a now-laid egg 
was wanted for a sick person, and behold ! no such thing 
was to be found throughout the kingdom of Israel, for since 

* Metastasio 



THE DOCTOR. 79 

this evil spirit was in durance not an egg had been laid ; and 
it appeared upon inquiry, that the whole course of kind was 
suspended. The chiefs of the synagogue perceived then 
that not without reason Zachariah had warned them ; they 
saw that if they put tlieir prisoner to death, the world must 
come to an end; and therefore they contented themselves 
with putting out his eyes, that he might not see to do so 
much mischief, and let him go. 

Thus it was that Cupid became blind — a fact unknown to 
the Greek and Roman poets, and to all the rhymesters who 
have succeeded ihem. 

The rabbis are coarse fablers. Take away love, and not 
physical nature only, but the heart of the moral world would 
be palsied ; 

This is the salt unto humanity, 
And keeps it sweet.* 

Senza di lui 
Che diverrian le sfere, 
II mar, la terra? Alia sua chiara face 
Si coloran le slelle ; ordine e lume 
Ei lor rninistra ; egli manliene in pace 
Gli' elemente discordi ; unisce insieme 
Gli opposti eccessi ; e con eterno giro, 
Che sembra caso, ed e saper profondo. 
Forma, scompone, e riproduce il mondo.f 

It is with this passion as with the Amreeta in Southey's 
Hindoo tale, the most original of his poems ; its effects are 
beneficial or mahgnant according to the subject on which it 
acts. In this respect love may also be likened to the sun 
under whose influence one plant elaborates nutriment for 
man, and another poison ; and which, while it draws up pes- 
tilence from the marsh and jungle, and sets the simoom in 
motion over the desert, diffuses light, life, and happiness 
over the healthy and cultivated regions of the earth. 

It acts terribly upon poets. Poor creatures, nothing in the 
whole details of the Ten Persecutions, or the history of the 
Spanish Inquisition, is more shocking than what they have 
suffered from love, according to the statements which they 
have given of their own sufferings. They have endured 
scorching, frying, roasting, burning, sometimes by a slow 
fire, sometimes by a quick one ; and melting — and this too 
from a fire which, while it thus affects the heart and liver, 
raises not a blister upon the skin ; resembling in this respect 
that penal fire which certain theological writers describe as 
being more intense because it is invisible — existing not in 
form, but in essence, and acting therefore upon spirit as ma- 
terial and visible fire acts upon the body. Sometimes they 

* Beaumont and Fletcher. f Metastasio. 



80 THE DOCTOR. 

have undergone from the same cause all the horrors of freez- 
ing and petrifaction. Very frequently the brain is affected; 
and one pecuUar symptom of the insanity arising from this 
cause is, that the patients are sensible of it, and appear to 
boast of their misfortune. 

Hear how it operated upon Lord Brooke, who is called 
the most thoughtful of poets, by the most bookful of lau- 
reates. The said Lord Brooke in his love, and in his thought- 
fulness confesseth thus : — 

" I sigh ; I sorrow ; I do play the fool !" 

Hear how the grave, the learned Pasquier describes its ter- 
rible effects upon himself! 

" Ja je sens en mes os une flamme nouvelle 
Qai me mine, qui m'ard, qui brusle ma moueile." 

Hear its worse moral consequences, which Euphues avowed 
in his wicked days ! " He that cannot dissemble in love is 
not worthy to live. I am of this mind, that both might and 
malice, deceit and treachery, all perjury and impiety, may 
lawfully be committed in love, which is lawless." 

Hear too how Ben Jonson makes the Lady Frampul ex- 
press her feelings : 

" My fires and fears are met : I burn and freeze ; 
My liver's one great coal, my heart shrunk up 
With all the fibres ; and the mass of blood 
Within me is a standing lake of fire, 
Curl'd with the cold wind of my gelid sighs, 
That drive a drift of sleet through all my body, 
And shoot a February through my veins." 

And hear how Artemidorus, not the oneirologist, but the 
great philosopher at the court of the Emperor Sferamond, 
describes the appearances which he had observed in dis- 
secting some of those unfortunate persons who had died of 
love. *' Quant a mon regard," says he, " j'en ay veu faire 
anatomic de quelques uns qui estoient morts de cette mala- 
die, qui avoient leurs entrailles toutes retirees, leur pauvre 
coeur tout brusle, leur foye toute enfume, leurs poulmons tout 
rostis, les ventricules de leurs cerveaux tous endommagez ; 
et je croy que leur pauvre ame etoit cuite et arse a petite feu, 
pour la vehemence et excessif chaleur et ardeurinextinguible 
qu'ils enduroint lors que la fievre d'amour les avoit sur- 
prins."* 

But the most awful description of its dangerous operation 
upon persons of his own class is given by the prince of the 
French poets, not undeservedly so called in his own times. 

* Amadis de Gaule, iiv. 23. 



THE DOCTOR. 81 

Describing the effect of love upon himself when he is in the 
presence of his mistress, Ronsard says — 

" Tant s'en faut que je sols alors maistre de moy, 
Que je in'rois les dieux, et trahirois mon roy, 
Je vendrois mon pay, je meurtrirois mon pere ; 
Telle rage me lient aprfes que j'ay taste 
A longs traits amoreux de la poison amfere 
Qui sort de ces beaux yeux dont je suis enchante." 

Mercy on us ! neither Petrarch nor poor Abel ShulHebot- 
torn himself was so far gone as this ! 

In a diseased heart it loses its nature, and combining 
with the morbid affection which it finds produces a new dis- 
ease. 

When it gets into an empty heart, it works there like 
quicksilver in an apple dumpling, while the astonished cook, 
ignorant of the roguery which has been played her, thinks 
that there is not death, but the devil in the pot. 

In a full heart, which is tantamount to saying a virtuous 
one, (for in every other, conscience keeps a void place for it- 
self, and the hollow is always felt,) it is sedative, sanative, 
and preservative : a drop ot the true elixir, no mithridate so 
effectual against the infection of vice. 

How then did this passion act upon Leonard and Margaret 1 
In a manner which you will not find described in any of Mr. 
Thomas Moore's poems ; and which Lord Byron is as inca- 
pabe of understanding, or even believing in another, as he is 
of feeling it in himself. 



CHAPTER LXXVII. P. I. 

MORE CONCERNING LOVE AND THE DREAM OF LIFE. 

Happy the bonds that hold ye ; 
Sure they be sweeter far than liberty. 
There is no blessedness but in such bondage ; 
Happy that happy chain ; such hnks are heavenly. 

Beaumont and Fletcher. 

I WILL not describe the subsequent interviews between 
Leonard and his cousin, short and broken but precious as 
they were ; nor that parting one in which hands were 
plighted, with the sure and certain knowledge that hearts had 
been interchanged. Remembrance will enable some of my 
readers to portray the scene, and then perhaps a sigh maybe 
heaved for the days that are gone : hope will picture it to 



82 THE DOCTOR. 

Others — and with them the sigh will be for the days that are 
to come. 

There was not that indefinite deferment of hope in this 
case at which the heart sickens. Leonard had been bred up 
in poverty from his childhood : a parsimonious allowance, 
grudgingly bestowed, had contributed to keep him frugal at 
college, by calling forth a pardonable if not a commendable 
sense of pride in aid of a worthier principle. He knew that 
he could rely upon himself for frugality, industry, and a 
cheerful as well as a contented mind. He had seen the mis- 
erable state of bondage in which Margaret existed with her 
aunt, and his resolution was made to deliver her from that 
bondange as soon as he could obtain the smallest benefice on 
which it was possible for them to subsist. They agreed to 
live rigorously within their means, however poor, and put 
their trust in Providence. They could not be deceived in 
each other, for they had grown up together ; and they knew 
that they were not deceived in themselves. Their love had 
the freshness of youth, but prudence and forethought were 
not wanting ; the resolution which they had taken brought 
with it peace of mind, and no misgiving was felt in either 
heart when they prayed for a blessing upon their purpose. 
In reality it had already brought a blessing with it ; and this 
they felt ; for love, when it deserves that name, produces in 
us what may be called a regeneration of its own — a second 
birth — dimly, but yet in some degree resembling that which 
is effected by divine love when its redeeming work is accom- 
plished in the soul. 

Leonard returned to Oxford happier than all this world's 
wealth, or this world's honours could have made him. He 
had now a definite and attainable hope — an object in life 
which gave to life itself a value. For Margaret, the world 
no longer seemed to her like the same earth which she had 
till then inhabited. Hitherto she had felt herself a forlorn and 
solitary creature, without a friend ; and the sweet sounds 
and pleasant objects of nature had imparted as little cheer- 
fulness to her as to the debtor who sees green fields in sun- 
shine from his prison, and hears the lark singing at liberty. 
Her heart was open now to all the exhilarating and all the 
softening influences of birds, fields, flowers, vernal suns, and 
melodious streams. She was subject to the same daily and 
hourly exercises of meekness, patience, and humility ; but 
the trial was no longer painful; with love in her heart, and 
hope and sunshine in her prospect, she found even a pleasure 
in contrasting her present condition with that which was in 
store for her. 

In these our days every young lady holds the pen of a 
ready writer, and words flow from it as fast as it can indent 
its zigzag lines, according to the reformed system of writing 
—which said system improves handwritings by making them 



THE DOCTOR. 83 

alike and alii. legible. At that time women wrote better and all 
spelled worse : but letter writing- was not one of their accom- 
plishments. It had not yet become one of the general pleas- 
ures and luxuries of life — perhaps the greatest gratifica- 
tion which the progress of civihzation has given us. There 
was then no mail coach to waft a sigh across the country at 
the rate of eight miles an hour. Letters came slowly and 
with long intervals between ; but when they came, the hap- 
piness which they imparted to Leonard and Margaret lasted 
during the interval, however long. To Leonard it was as an 
exhilarant and a cordial which rejoiced and strengthened 
him. He trod the earth with a lighter and more elated move- 
ment on the day when he received a letter from Margaret, 
as if he felt himself invested with an importance which he 
had never possessed till the happiness of another human 
being was inseparably associated with his own. 

So proud a thing it was for him to wear 

Love's golden chain, 
With which it is best freedom to be bound.* 

Happy indeed, if there be happiness on earth, as that same 
sweet poet says, is he 

Who love enjoys, and placed hath his mind 
Where fairest virtues fairest beauties grace, 

Then in himself such store of wealth doth find 
That he deserves to find so good a place.* 

This was Leonard's case ; and when he kissed the paper 
which her hand had pressed, it was with a consciousness of 
the strength and sincerity of his affection, which at once re- 
joiced and fortified his heart. To Margaret his letters were 
like summer dew upon the herb that thirsts for such refresh- 
ment. Whenever they arrived, a headache became the cause 
or pretext for retiring earlier than usual to her chamber, that 
she might weep and dream over the precious lines. 

True gentle love is like the summer dew, 
Which falls around when all is still and hush : 

And falls unseen until its bright drops strew 
With odours, herb and flower, and bank and bush. 

Oh love- when womanhood is in the flush. 
And man's a young and an unspotted thhig, 

His first breathed word, and her half-conscious blush. 
Are fair as light in heaven, or flowers in spring.t 

» Drummond. ♦ Allan Cunningham. 



84 THE DOCTOIT. 



INTERCHAPTER VII. 

OBSOLETE ANTICIPATIONS ; BEING A LEAF OUT OF AN OLD ALMA- 
NAC, WHICH, LIKE OTHER OLD ALMANACS, THOUGH OUT OF 
DATE IS NOT OUT OF USE. 

You play before me, I shall often look on you, 

I give you that warning beforehand. 

Take it not ill, my masters, I shall laugh at you, 

And truly when I am least offended with you ; 

It is my humour "~ 

MiDDLETON. 

When St, Thomas Aquinas was asked in what manner a 
man might best become learned^ he answered, '' By reading 
one book ;" " meaning," says Bishop Taylor, " that an un- 
derstanding entertained with several objects is intent upon 
neither, and profits not." Lord Holland's poet, the prolific 
Lope de Vega, tells us to the same purport : — 

" Que es estudiante notable 

El que lo es de un libro solo. 
Que quando no estavan llenos 

De tant03 libros agenos, 

Como van dexando atras, 

Sabian los hombres mas 

Porque estudiavan en menos." 

The homo univs libri is indeed proverbially formidable to 
all conversational figurantes. Like ^-our sharp shooter, he 
knows his piece perfectly, and is sure of his shot. I would 
therefore modestly insinuate to the reader what infinite 
advantages would be possessed by that fortunate person 
who shall be the homo hvjus libri. 

According to the lawyers the king's eldest son is for cer- 
tain purposes of full age as soon as he is born — great being 
the mysteries of law ! I will assume that in like manner hie 
/j^e?' is at once to acquire maturity of fame : for fame, like 
the o-ik, is not the product of a single generation ; and a new 
book in its reputation is but as an acorn, the full growth of 
which can be known only by posterity. The doctor will 
not make so great a sensation upon its first appearance as 
Mr. Southey's Wat Tyler, or the first two cantos of Don 
Juati ; still less will it be talked of so universally as the mur- 
der of Mr. Weire. Talked of. hov.-pvfr. it will be — widely, 
largely, loudly, and lengthily talked o*^; lauded and vitupe- 
rated,' vilified and extolled, heartily abused and no less 
heartily admired. 



THE DOCTOR. 85 

Thus much is quite certain ; that before it has been pub- 
lished a week, eight persons will be named as having written 
it: and these eight positive lies will be affirmed each as 
positive truths on positive knowledge. 

Within the month Mr. Woodbee will write to one mar- 
quis, one earl, two bishops, and two reviewers major, as- 
suring them that he is not the author. Mr. Sligo will cau- 
tiously avoid making any such declaration, and will take oc- 
casion significantly to remark upon the exceeding impro- 
priety of saying to any person that a work which has been 
published anonymously is supposed to be his. He will 
observe also that it is altogether unwarrantable to ask any 
one under such circumstances whether the report be true. 
Mr. Blueman's opinion of the book will be asked by four- 
and-twenty female correspondents, all of the order of the 
stocking. 

Professor Wilson will give it his hearty praise. Sir Walter 
Scott will deny that he has any hand in it. Mr. Coleridge 
will smile if he is asked the question. If it be proposed to 
Sir Humphrey Davy he will smile too, and perhaps blush 
also. The laureate will observe a careless silence ; Mr. 
Wordsworth a dignified one. And Professor Porson, if he 
were not gone where his Greek is of no use to him, would 
accept credit for it, though he would not claim it. 

The opium-eater while he peruses it, will doubt whether 
there is a book in his hand, or whether he be not in a dream 
of intellectual delight. 

" My little more than nothing," Jeffrey the Second, (for, 
of the small Jeffreys, Jeffrey Hudson must always be the 
first,) will look less when he pops upon his own name in its 
pages. Sir Jeffrey Dunstan is Jeffrey the Third : he must 
have been placed second in right of seniority, had it not 
been for the profound respect with which 1 regard the uni- 
versity of Glasgow. The Rector of Glasgow takes prece- 
dence of the Mayor of Garratt. 

And what will the reviewers do? I speak not of those 
who come to their office, (for such there are, though few,) 
like judges to the bench, stowed with all competent 
knowledge and in an equitable mind; prejudging nothing, 
however much they may foreknow; and who give their 
sentence without regard to persons, upon the merits of the 
case; but the aspirants and wranglers at the bar; the drib- 
blers and the spitfires ; (there are of both sorts ;) the puppies 
who bite for the pleasure which they feel in exercising their 
teeth, and the dogs whose gratification consists in their 
knowledge of the pain and injury that they inffict; the 
creepers of literature, who suck their food like the ivy from 
what they strangulate and kill ; they who have a party to 
serve, or an opponent to run down ; what opinion will they 
pronounce in their utter ignorance of the author? They 
14* 



86 THE DOCTOR. 

cannot play without a bias in their bowls ! Ay, there's the 
rub! 

Ha ha, ha ha ! this world doth pass 

Most merrily, I'll be sworn, 
For many an honest Indian ass 

Goes for a unicorn. 
Farra diddle dyno, 
This is idle fyno ! 
Tygh hygh, tygh hygh ! oh sweet delight ! 

He tickles this age that can 
Call Tullia's ape a marmasite, 

And Leda's goose a svvan.^ 

Then the discussion that this book will excite among blue 
stockings, and blue beards ! The stir I the buzz ! the bustle ! 
The talk at tea tables in the country and conversazione in 
town — in Mr. Murrays's room, at Mr. Longman's dinners, 
in Mr. Hatchard's shop — at the Royal Institution — at the 
Alfred, at the admiralty, at Holland House ! Have you seen 
it 1 Do you understand it % Are you not disgusted with it 1 
Are you not provoked at it ? Are you not dehghted with it ? . 
Whose is it 1 Whose can it be ? 

Is it Walter Scott's] — There is no Scotch in the book — 
and that hand is never to be mistaken in its masterly strokes. 
Is it Lord Byron's ? — Lord Byron's ! Why the author fears 
God, honours the king, and loves his country and his kind. 
Is it by little Moore ■? — If it were we should have sentimental 
lewdness, Irish patriotism, which is something very like 
British treason, and a plentiful spicing of personal insults to 
the prince regent. Is it the laureate ? — He lies buried 
under his own historical quartos ! There is neither his man- 
nerism, nor his moralism, nor his methodism. Is it Words- 
worth! — What — an elephant cutting capers on the slack 
wire ! Is it Coleridge \ — The method indeed of the book 
might lead to such a suspicion — but then it is intelligible 

throughout. Mr. A ? — There is Latin in it. Mr, B 1 

— There is Greek in it. Mr. C ? — It is written in good 

English. Mr. Hazlitt ] — It contains no panegyric upon Bona- 
parte ; no imitations of Charles Lamb ; no plagiarisms from 
Mr. Coleridge's conversation ; no abuse of that gentleman, 
Mr. Southey, and Mr. Wordsworth — and no repetitions of 
himself. Certainly therefore it is not Mr. Hazlitt's. 

Is it Charles Lamb ! 

" Baa ! baa ! good sheep, have you any woo] 
Yes, marry, that I have, three bags full." 

Good sheep I write here, in emendation of the nursery 
song ; because nobody ought to call this Lamb a hlack one. 

* British Bibliographer. 



i 



THE DOCTOR. 



87 



Comes it from the admiralty ? — There, indeed, wit enough 
might be found, and acuteness enough, and enough of saga- 
city, and enough of knowledge both of books and men ; but 
when 

The raven croaked as she sat at her meal, 
And the old woman knew what he said,* 

the old woman knew also by the tone who said it. 

Does it contain the knowledge, learning, wit, sprightli- 
ness, and good sense which that distinguished patron of let- 
ters, my Lord Puttiface Papinhead, has so successfully con- 
cealed from the public and from all his most intimate ac- 
quaintances during his whole life 1 

Is it Theodore Hook, with the learned assistance of his 
brother the archdeacon ? A good guess that of the Hook — 
have an eye to it ! 

" I guess it is our Washington Irving," says the New-Eng- 
lander. The Virginian replies, " I reckon it may be ;" and 
they agree that none of the old country authors are worthy 
to be compared with him. 

Is it Smith 1 

Which of the Smiths 1 for they are a numerous people. 
To say nothing of blacksmiths, whitesmiths, goldsmiths, and 
silversmiths, there is Sidney, who is joke-Smith to the Edin- 
burgh Review; and William, who is motion-Smith to the 
dissenters, orthodox and heterodox, in parliament, having 
been elected to represent them — to wit, the aforesaid dis- 
senters — by the citizens of Norwich. And there is Cher 
Bobus, who works for nobody ; and there is Horace and his 
brother James, who work in Colburn's forge, at the sign of 
the Camel, You probably meant these brothers ; they are 
clever fellows, with wit and humour as fluent as their ink ; 
and, to their praise be it spoken, with no gall in it. But 
their wares are of a very different quality. 

Is it the author of Thinks I to Myself? " Think you so V 
says I to myself, I. Or the author of the Miseries of Human 
Life? George Coleman? Wrangham, unfrocked and in his 
lighter moods? Yorick of Dublin? Dr. Clarke ? Dr. Bus- 
by ? The author of My Pocket Book ? D'Israeli ? Or that 
phenomenon of eloquence, the celebrated Irish barrister. 
Counsellor Phillips? Or may it not be the joint composi- 
tion of Sir Charles and Lady Morgan? he compounding the 
speculative, scientific, and erudite ingredients ; she inter- 
mingling the lighter parts, and infusing her own grace, airi- 
ness, vivacity, and spirit through the whole. A well-aimed 
guess ; for they would throw out opinions differing from 

» Southey. 



88 THE DOCTOR. 

their own, as ships in time of war hoist false colours; and 
thus they would enjoy the baffitd curiosity of those wide 
circles of literature and fashion in which they move with 
such enviable distinction both at home and abroad. 
Is it Mr. Mathurin 1 Is it Hans Busk 1 

" Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny bride, 
Busk ye, rny winsome marrow !" 

Is it he who wrote of a world without souls, and made the 
Velvet Cushion relate its adventures'? 

Is it Rogers ^ — The wit and the feeling of the book may 
fairly lead to such an ascription, if there be sarcasm enough 
to support it. So may the Pleasures of Memory which the 
author has evidently enjoyed during the composition. 

Is it Mr. Utinam 1 — He would have written it — if he could. 
Is itHookham Frere] — He could have written it — if he would. 
Has Matthias taken up a new pursuit in literature 1 Or has 
William Bankes been trying the experiment whether he can 
impart as much amusement and instruction by writing as in 
conversation 1 

Or is it some new genius, " breaking out at once, like the 
Irish rebellion, a hundred thousand strong V Not one of 
the planets or fixed stars of our literary system, but a comet 
as brilliant as it is eccentric in its course. 

Away the dogs go, whining here, snuffing there, nosing in 
this place, pricking their ears in that, and now full mouthed 
upon a false scent, and now again all at fault. 

Oh, the delight of walking invisible among mankind ! 

" Whoever he be," says Father O'Faggot, " he is an auda- 
cious heretic." " A. schoolmaster, by his learning," says 
Dr. Fullbottom Wigsby. The bishop would take him for a 
divine, if there were not sometimes a degree of levity in the 
book, which, though always innocent, is not altogether con- 
sistent with the gown. Sir Fingerfee Dolittle discovers evi- 
dent marks of the medical profession. " He has manifestly 
Deen a traveller," says the general, " and lived in the world." 
The man of letters says it would not surprise him if it were 
the work of a learned Jew. Mr. Dullman sees nothing in 
the book to excite the smallest curiosity: he really does 
not understand it, and doubts whether the author himself 
knew what he would be at. Mr. MDry declares, with a 
barsh Scotch accent, " It's just parfit nonsense." 



THE DOCTOR. 



m 



INTERCHAPTER VIII. 

A LEAF OUT OF THE NEW ALMANAC THE AUTHOR THINKS CONSID- 
ERATELY OF HIS COMMENTATORS ; RUMINATES ; RELATES AN 
ANECDOTE OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE ; QUOTES SOME PYRA- 
MIDAL STANZAS, WHICH ARE NOT THE WORSE FOR THEIR AR- 
CHITECTURE. AND DELIVERS AN OPINION CONCERNING BURNS. 

To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body ; no less 
are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul. " Earth thou art, to earth 
thou shall return.''^ — Fuller. 

The coiimientators in the next millennium, and even in the 
next century, will, I foresee, have no little difficulty in set- 
tling the chronology of this opus. I do not mean the time 
of its conception, the very day and hour of that happy event 
having been recorded in the seventh chapter, A. I. : nor the 
time of its birth, that, as has been registered in the weeklj' 
literary journals, having been in the second week of Janu- 
ary, 1834. But at what intervening times certain of its 
chapters and interchapters were composed. 

A similar difficulty has been found with the Psalms, the 
odes of Horace, Shakspeare's plays, and other writings 
sacred or profane, of such celebrity as to make the critical 
inquiry an object of reasonable curiosity, or of real mo- 
ment. 

They, however, who peruse the present volume while it 
is yet a new book, will at once have perceived that between 
the composition of the preceding chapter and their perusal 
thereof, an interval as long as one of Nourjahad's judicial 
visitations of sleep must have elapsed. For many of the 
great performers, who figured upon the theatre of public life 
when the anticipations in that cliapter were expressed, have 
made their exits; and others who are not there mentioned, 
have since that time made their entrances. 

The children of that day have reached their stage of ado- 
lescence ; the youth are now in midlife ; the middle aged have 
grown old, and the old have passed away. I say nothing 
of the political changes that have intervened. Who can 
bestow a thought upon the pantomime of politics, when his 
mind is fixed upon the tragedy of human life 1 

Robert Landor (a true poet like his great brother, if ever 
there was one) says finely in his Impious Banquet, 

" There is a pause near death when men grow bold 
Towards all things else." 



90 THE DOCTOR. 

Before that awful pause, whenever the thought is brought 
home to us, we feel ourselves near enough to grow indiffer- 
ent to them, and to perceive the vanity of earthly pursuits, 
those only excepted which have the good of our fellow- 
creatures for their object, and tend to our owui spiritual im- 
provement. 

But this is entering upon a strain too serious for this 
place ; though any reflection upon the lapse of time and the 
changes that steal on us in its silent course leads naturally 
to such thoughts. 

Omnia paulatim consuinit longior aestas, 
Vivendoque simul tnorimur, rapimurque manendo. 
Ipse mihi collatus eniin non ille videbor ; 
Frons alia est, rnoresque alii, nova mentis imago, 
Voxque aliud mutata sonat.* 

Sir Thomas Lawrence was told one day that he had made 
a portrait which he was then finishing ten years too young, 
" Well," he replied, " I have ; and 1 see no reason why it 
should not be made so." There was this reason : ten years, 
if they bring with them only their ordinary portion of evil 
and of good, cannot pass over any one's head without leaving 
their moral as well as physical traces, especially if they 
have been years of active and intellectual life. The painter 
therefore who dips his brush in Medea's kettle, neither 
represents the countenance as it is, nor as it has been. 

'• And what does that signify ?" Sir Thomas might ask in 
rejoinder. What indeed! Little to any one at present, and 
nothing when the very few who are concerned in it shall 
have passed away — except to the artist. The merits of his 
picture as a work of art are all that will then be considered; 
'ts fidelity as a likeness will be taken for granted, or be 
thought of as little consequence, as in reality it then is. 

Yet if Titian or Vandyke had painted upon such a princi- 
ple, their portraits would not have been esteemed as they 
now are. We should not have felt the certainty which we 
now feel, that in looking at the pictures of the Emperor 
Charles V. and of Cortes; of King Charles the Martyr, and 
of Strafford, we see the veritable likeness and true character 
of those ever-memorable personages. 

Think of the changes that any ten years in the course of 
human life produce in body and in mind, and in the face, 
which is in a certain degree the index of both. From thirty 
to forty is the decade during which the least outward and 
visible alteration takes place ; and yet how perceptible is 
t even during that stage in every countenance that is com- 
osed of good flesh and blood! For I do not speak of those 
which look as if they had been hewn out of granite, cut out 
of a block, cast in bronze, or moulded either in wax, tallow, 
or paste. 

* Petrarch. 



THE DOCTOR. 91 

Ten years ! 

Quarles in those Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man, which 
he presents to the reader as an Egyptian dish dressed in the 
English fashion, symbolizes it by the similitude of a taper 
divided into eight equal lengths, which are to burn for ten 
years each — if the candle be not either wasted, or blown out 
by the wind, or snuffed out by an unskilful hand, or domed 
(to use a good old word) with an extinguisher, before it 
is burned down to the socket. The poem which accompanies 
the first print of the series, begins thus, in pyramidal stanzas ; 
such they were designed to be, but their form resembles 
that of an aztecan or Mexican cu, rathey than of an Egyptian 
pyramid. 

Behold 

How short a span 

Was long enough of old 

To measure out the life of man ! 

In those well temper'd days, his time was then, 

Surveyed, cast up, and found but threescore years and ten. 

2. 

Alas, 

And what is that ! 

They come and slide and pass 

Before my pen can tell thee what. 

The posts of life are swift, which having run 

Their seven short stages o'er, their shortliv'd task is done. 

•' I had an old granduncle," says Burns, " with whom my 
mother lived a while in her girlish years. The good man 
was long blind ere he died, during which time his highest en- 
joyment was to sit down and cry, while my mother would 
sing the simple old song of the life and age of man." 

It is certain that tliis old song was in Burns's mind when 
he composed to the same cadence those well-known stanzas 
of which the burden is that " man was made to mourn." 
But the old blind man's tears were tears of piety, not of re- 
gret ; it was his greatest enjoyment thus to listen and to 
weep ; and his heart the while was not so much in the past 
as his hopes were in the future. They were patient hopes ; 
he knew in whom he believed, and was awaiting his deliver- 
ance in God's good time. " Sunt homines qui cum patientia 
moriuntur ; sunt autem quidam perfecti qui cum patientia 
vivunt."* Burns may perhaps have been conscious in his 
better hours (and he had many such) that he had inherited 
the feeling (if not the sober piety) which is so touchingly 
exemplified in this family anecdote ; that it was the main in- 
gredient in the athanasia of his own incomparable effusions ; 
and that without it he never could have been the moral, and 
therefore never the truly great poet that he eminently is. 

* St. Augustin. 



92 THE DOCTOR. 



INTERCHAPTER IX. 

N ILLUSTRATION FOR THE ASSISTANCE OF THE COMMENTATORS 
DRAWN FROM THE HISTORV OF THE KORAN — REMARKS WHICH 
ARE NOT INTENDED FOR MUSSULMEN, AND WHICH THE MIS- 
SIONARIES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN ARE ADVISED NOT TO 
TRANSLATE. 

You will excuse me if I do not strictly coi^fine myself to narration, but 
now and then intersperse such reflections as may oflfer while 1 am wri- 
ting. — John Newton. 

But the most illustrious exemplification of the difficulty 
which the Doctorean or Dovean commentators will experi- 
ence in settling the chronology of these chapters is to be 
found in the history of the Koran. 

Mohammedan doctors are agreed that the first part or par- 
cel of their sacred book, which was revealed to the Prophet, 
consisted of what now stands as the first five verses of the 
ninety-sixth chapter ; and that the chapter which ought to 
be the last of the whole hundred and fomteen, because it 
was the last which Mohammed dehvered, is placed as the 
ninth in order. 

The manner in which the book was originally produced 
and afterward put together explains how this happened. 

Whenever the impostor found it convenient to issue a por- 
tion, one of his disciples wrote it, from his dictation, either 
upon palm leaves or parchment, and these were put promis- 
cuously into a chest. After his death, Abubeker collected 
them into a volume, but with so little regard to any principle 
of order or connection that the only rule which he is sup- 
posed to have followed was that of placing the longest chap- 
ters first. 

Upon this M. Savary remarks, " Ce bouleversement dans 
un ouvrage qui est un recueil de preceptes donnes dans dif- 
ferens temps et dont les premiers sont souvent abroges par 
les suivans, y a jette la plus grand confusion. On ne doit 
done y chercher ni ordre ni suite." And yet one of the chap- 
ters opens with the assertion that " a judicious order reigns 
in this book," according to Savary's version, which here fol- 
lows those commentators who prefer this among the five in- 
terpretations which the words may bear. 

Abubeker no doubt was of opinion that it was impossible 
to put the book together in any way that could detract from 
its value and its use. If he were, as there is every reason 



THE DOCTOR. ^'S 

to think, a true believer, he would infer that the same divine 
power which revealed it piecemeal would preside over the 
arrangement, and that the earthly copy would thus miracu- 
lously be made a faithful transcript of the eternal and uncre- 
ated original. 

If, on the other hand, he had been as audacious a knave 
as his son-in-law, the false prophet himself, he would have 
come with equal certainty to the same conclusion by a differ- 
ent process; for he would have known that, if the separate 
portions, when they were taken out of the chest, liad been 
shuffled and dealt like a pack of cards, they would have been 
just as well assorted as it was possible to assort them. 

A North-Country dame, in days of old economy, when the 
tailor worked for women as well as men, delivered one of 
her nether garments to a professor of the sartorial art with 
these directions : — 

" Here, talleor, tak this petcut ; thoo mun bin' me't, and 
thoo mun tap-bin' me't ; thoo mun turn it rangsid afoor, tap- 
sid bottom, insid oot: thoo can do't, thoo mun do't, and thoo 
mun do't speedly." Neither Bonaparte nor Wellington 
ever gave their orders on the field of battle with more precis- 
ion, or more emphatic and authoritative conciseness. 

Less contrivance was required for editing the Koran than 
for renovating this petticoat. The commander of the faith- 
ful had only to stitch it together and bin' me't. 

The fable is no doubt later than Abubeker's time, that the 
first transcript of this book from its eternal and uncreated 
original in the very essence of the Deity is on the preserved 
table, fast by the throne of God ; on which table all the di- 
vine decrees of things past, passing, and to come are recorded. 
The size of the table may be estimated by that of the pen 
wherewith these things were written on it. The great pen 
was one of the first three created things : it is in length five 
hundred years' journey, and in breadth eighty ; and 1 suppose 
the rate of an angel's travelling is intended, which consider- 
ably exceeds that of a railroad, a racehorse, or a carrier 
pigeon. A copy of the Koran, transcribed upon some celes- 
tial material from this original on the preserved table, bound 
in silk, and ornamented with gold, and set with precious 
stones from paradise, was shown to the Prophet by the 
angel Gabriel once a year, for his consolation, and twice 
during the last year of his life. 

Far later is the legend transmitted by the Spanish Moor, 
Mohammed Rabadan,thatOLhman arranged the fragments and 
copied them in the Prophet's lifetime; and that when this 
transcript was completed Gabriel presented the Prophet with 
another copy of the whole, written by his own archangelic 
hand in heaven, whereby the greatest honour and most per- 
fect satisfaction that could be given to man were imparted, 
and the most conclusive proof afforded of the fidelity with 



94 THE DOCTOR, 

which Othman had executed his holy task. For when his 
copy was collated with the angel's it was found to be so 
exact, " that not the least tittle was variated or omitted, 
but it seemed as if the same hand and pen had written 
them both;" the only difference being in the size of the 
letters, and consequently of the two books, and in their 
legibility. 

Gabriel's copy was contained in sixteen leaves, the size of 
a Damascus coin not larger than an English shilling; and 
the strokes of the letters were so much finer than any 
human hair, or any visible thread, that they are compared 
to the hairs of a serpent, which are so fiue that no micro- 
scope has ever yet discovered them. They were plainly leg- 
ible to all who were pure and undefiled ; but no unclean per- 
son could discern a single syllable, nor could any pen ever 
be made fine enough to imitate such writing. The ink was 
of a rich purple, the cover of a bright chestnut colour. Mo- 
hammed continually carried this wonderful book about him 
in his bosom, and when he slept he had it always under his 
pillow or next his heart. After his decease it disappeared, 
nor though Othman and Ali diligently sought for it, could it 
ever be found ; it was believed, therefore, to have returned 
to the place from whence it came. 

But this is a legend of later date ; and learned Mohammed- 
ans would reject it not merely as being apocryphal, but as 
false. 

Before I have done with the subject, let me here, on the 
competent authority of Major Edward Moore, inform the 
European reader, who may be ignorant of Arabic, that the 
name of the Arabian false prophet is, in the language of 
his own country, written with four letters — M, H, M, D — a 
character called teshdid over the medial M denoting that 
sound to be prolonged or doubled ; so that Mahammad would 
better than any other spelling represent the current vernacu- 
lar pronunciation. 

Here let me observe by the way that the work which the 
reader has now the privilege of perusing is as justly entitled 
to the name of the Koran as the so called pseudo-bible itself, 
because the word signifies " That which ought to be read;'''' and 
moreover, that, like the Mussulman's Koran, it might also be 
called Dhikr, which is, being interpreted, " The Admonition,'''' 
because of the salutary instruction and advice which it is 
intended to convey. 

Take, if ye can, ye careless and supine, 
Coansel and caution from a voice like mine ! 
Truths that the theorist could never reach, 
And observations taught me 1 vould teach.* 

*• Cowper. 



THE DOCTOR. 95 

Having given the reader this timely intimation, I shall now 
explain in what my commentators will find a difficulty of the 
same kind as that which Abubeker would have had, if, in put- 
ting together tlie disorderly writings intrusted to his care, 
he had endeavoured to arrange them according to the order 
in which the several portions were produced. 

When Mohammed wanted to establish an ordinance for his 
followers, or to take out a license for himself for the breach 
of his own laws, as when he chose to have an extra allow- 
ance of wives, or coveted those of his neighbours, he used 
to promulgate a fragment of the Koran, revealed pro re natd, 
that is to say, in honest old English, /or the nonce. It has 
been determined with sufficient accuracy at what times cer- 
tain portions were composed, because the circumstances in 
his public or private history which rendered them necessary 
or convenient, are known. And what has been done with 
these parts might have been done with the whole, if due 
pains had been taken, at a time when persons were still living 
who knew when, and why, every separate portion had been 
— as they believed — revealed. This would have required 
more diligence than the first caliph had either leisure or in- 
clination to bestow, and perhaps more sagacity than he 
possessed: the task would have been difficult, but it was 
possible. 

But my commentators will never be able to ascertain any- 
thing more of the chronology of this Koran, than the dates 
of its conception, and of its birthday ; the interval between 
them having been more than twenty years. 



INTERCHAPTER X. 

MORE ON THE FOREGOING SUBJECT — ELUCmATION FROM HENRY 

MORE AND DR. WATTS AN INCmENTAL OPINION UPON HORACE 

WALPOLE THE STREAM OF THOUGHT " FLOWETH AT ITS OWN 

SWEET will" PICTURES AND BOOKS-r-A SAVING OF MR. PITt's 

CONCERNING WILBERFORCE THE AUTHOR EXPLAINS IN WHAT 

SENSE IT MIGHT BE SAID THAT HE SOMETIMES SHOOTS WITH 
A LONG BOW. 

Vorrei, disse il Signer Gasparo Pallavicino, che voi ragionassi un poco 
piu minutamente di questo, che iion fate ; che in vero vi tenete molto al 
generale, et quasi ci mostrate le cose per transito. — Il Cortegiano. 

Henry More, in the preface general to the collection of 
his philosophical writings, says to the reader, "If thy curi- 
osity be forward to inquire what I have done in these new 



96 THE DOCTOR. 

editions of my books, I am ready to inform thee that I have 
taken the same liberty in this intellectual g:arden of my own 
planting, that men usually take in their natural ones ; which 
is, to set or pluck up, to transplant and inoculate, where and 
what they please. And therefore if I have razed out some 
things, (which yet are but very few,) and transposed others, 
and inserted others, I hope I shall seem injurious to no man 
in ordering and cultivating this philosophical plantation of 
mine according to mine own humour and liking." 

Except as to the razing out, what our great Platonist has 
thus said for himself, may here be said for me. '' Many 
things," as the happy old lunatist, Thomas Mace, says, " are 
good, yea, very good ; but yet upon after consideration, we 
have met with the comparative, which is better; yea, and 
after that, with the superlative, (best of all.) by adding to, or 
altering a little, the same good things." 

During the years that this opus has been in hand, (and in 
head and heart also,) nothing was expunged as if it had be- 
come obsolete because the persons therein alluded to had 
departed like shadows, or the subjects there touched on had 
grown out of date ; but much was introduced from time to 
time where it fitted best. Allusions occur in relation to facts 
which are many years younger than the body of the chapter 
in which they have been grafted, thus rendering it impossible 
for any critic, however acute, to determine the date of any 
one chapter, by it contents. 

What Watts has said of his own Treatise upon the Im- 
provement of the Mind, may therefore, with strict fidelity, be 
applied to this book, which I trust, oh gentle reader, thou 
wilt regard as specially conducive to the improvement of 
thine. "The work was composed at different times, and by 
slow degrees. Now and then indeed it spread itself into 
branches and leaves, like a plant in April, and advanced 
seven or eight pages in a week ; and sometimes it lay by 
without growth, like a vegetable in the winter, and did not 
increase half so much in the revolution of a year. As 
thoughts occurred to me in reading or meditation, or in my 
notices of the various appearances of things among mankind, 
they were thrown under appropriate heads, and were, by de- 
grees, reduced to such a method as the subject would admit. 
The language and dress of these sentiments is such as the 
present temper of mind dictated, whether it were grave or 
pleasant, severe or smiling. And a book which has been 
twenty years in writing, may be indulged in some variety of 
style and manner, though I hope there will not be found any 
great difference of sentiment." With little transposition, 
Watts's wards have been made to suit my purpose; and when 
he afterward speaks of " so many lines altered, so many 
things interlined, and so many paragraphs and pages here 
and there inserted," the circumstances which he mentions 



THE DOCTOR. 97 

as having deceived him in computing the extentof his work, 
set forth the embarrassment which the commentators will 
find in settling the chronology of mine. 

The difficulty would not be obviated, were I, like Horace 
Walpole, (though Heaven knows for no such motives as in- 
fluenced that posthumous libeller,) to leave a box contain- 
ing the holograph manuscript of this opus in safe custody, 
with an injunction that the seals should not be broken till 
the year of our Lord 2000. Nothing more than what has 
been here stated, would appear in that inestimable manu- 
script. Whether I shall leave it as an heirloom in my fam- 
ily, or have it deposited either in the public library of my 
Alma Mater, or that of my own college, or bequeath it as a 
last mark of affection to the town of Doncaster, concerns not 
the present reader. Nor does it concern him to know whether 
the till then undiscoverable name of the author will be dis- 
closed at the opening of the seals. An adequate motive for 
placing the manuscript in safe custody is, that a standard 
would thus be secured for posterity, whereby the always ac- 
cumulating errors of the press might be corrected. For 
modern printers make more and greater blunders than the 
copyists of old. 

In any of those works which posterity will not be " willing 
to let perish," how greatly would the interest be enhanced, 
if the whole history of its rise and progress were known, and 
amid what circumstances, and with what views, and in what 
state of mind, certain parts were composed. Sir Walter, 
than whom no man ever took more accurate measure of the 
public taste, knew this well ; and posterity will always be 
grateful to him for having employed his declining years in 
communicating so much of the history of those works which 
obtained a wider and more rapid celebrity than any that ever 
preceded them, and perhaps than any that ever may follow 
them. 

An author of the last generation (I cannot call to mind 
who) treated such an opinion with contempt, saying in his 
preface that "there his work was, and that as the public 
were concerned with it only as it appeared before them, 
he should say nothing that would recall the blandishments of 
its childhood :" whether the book was one of which the ma- 
turity might just as well be forgotten as the nonage, I do not 
remember. But he must be little versed in bibliology, who 
has not learned that such reminiscences are not more agreea- 
ble to an author himself, than they are to his readers, (if he 
obtain any,) in after times ; for every trifle that relates to the 
history of a favourite author, and of his works, then becomes 
precious. 

Far be it from me to despise the relicmongers of literature, 
or to condemn them, except when they bring to light things 
which ought to have been buried with the dead; like the 



98 THE DOCTOR. 

Dumfries craniolonrists, who, when the grave of Burns was 
opened to receive ;..;e corpse of liis wife, took that opportunity 
of abstracling tiie poet's scuil, that they might make a cast 
from it! Had these men forgotten the malediction which 
Shakspeare utters from his monument ? And had they never 
read what Wordsworth says to such men in his poet's epi- 
taph : — 

" Art thou one all eyes, 
Philosopher ! a fingering- slave, 
One that would peep and botanize 
Upon his mother's g^rave i 

" Wrapp'd closely in thy sensual fleece. 
Oh turn aside— and take, 1 pray. 
That he below may rest in peace. 
Thy pinpoint of a soul away !" 

Oh for an hour of Burns's for these men's sake ! Were 
there a Witch of Endor in Scotland, it would be an act of 
comparative piety in her to bring up his spirit; to stigmatize 
them in verses that would burn for ever, would be a gratifi- 
cation for which he might think it worth while to be thus 
brought again upon earth. 

But to the harmless relicmongers we owe much ; much 
to the Thomas Hearnes and John Nichols, the Isaac Reids, 
and the Malones, the Hasle woods and Sir Egertons. Indi- 
vidually, I owe them much, and willingly take this opportu- 
nity of acknowledging the obligation. And let no one sup- 
pose that Sir Egerton is disparaged by being thus classed 
among the pioneers of literature. It is no disparagement for 
any man of letters, however great his endowments, and how- 
ever extensive his erudition, to take part in those patient and 
humble labours by which honour is rendered to his prede- 
cessors, and information preserved for those who come after 
him. 

But in every original work which lives and deserves to 
live there must have been some charms which no editorial 
diligence can preserve, no critical sagacity recover. The 
pictures of the old masters suffer much when removed from 
the places for which (and in which, many of them) they were 
painted. It may happen that one which has been conveyed 
from a Spanish palace or monastery to the collection of 
Marshal Soult, or any other plundermaster-general in Napo- 
leon's armies, and have passed from thence — honestly as re- 
gards the purchaser — to the hands of an English owner, may 
be hung at the same elevation as in its proper place, and in 
the same light. Still it loses much. The accompaniments 
are all of a different character ; the air and odour of the 
place are different. There is not here the locality that con- 
secrated it — no longer the religio loci. Wealth cannot pur- 
chase these ; power may violate and destroy, but it cannot 



THE DOCTOR. 99 

transplant them. The picture in its new situation is seen 
with a different feehng, by those who have any true feeling 
for such tilings. 

Literary works of imagination, fancy, or feeling, are liable 
to no injury of this kind; but in common with pictures they 
suffer a partial deterioration in even a short lapse of time. 
In such works as in pictures, there are often passages 
which once possessed a peculiar interest, personal and local, 
subordinate to the general interest. The painter introduced 
into an historical piece the portrait of his mistress, his wife, 
his child, his dog, his friend, or his faithful servant. The 
picture is not as a work of art the worse where these per- 
sons were not known, or when they are forgotten : but there 
was once a time when it excited on this account in very 
many beholders a peculiar delight which it can never more 
imparl. 

So it is with certain books ; and though there is perhaps 
little to regret in anything that becomes obsolete, an author 
may be allowed to sigh over what he feels and knows to be 
evanescent. 

Mr. Pitt used to say of Wilberforce that he was not so sin- 
gle minded in his speeches as might have been expected from 
the sincerity of his character, and as he would have been if 
he had been less dependant upon popular support. Those 
who knew him, and how he was connected, he said, could 
perceive that some things in his best speeches were in 
tended to tell in such and such quarters — upon Benjamii? 
Sleek in one place, Isaac Drab in another, and Nehemiah 
Wilyman in a third. Well would it be if no man ever looked 
askant with worse motives ! 

Observe, reader, that I call him simply Wilberforce, be- 
cause any common prefix would seem to disparage that 
name, especially if used by one who regarded him with ad- 
miration ; and with respect, which is better than admiration, 
because it can be felt for those only whose virtues entitle 
them to it ; and with kindliness, which is better than both, 
because it is called forth by those kindly qualities that are 
worth more than any talents, and without which a man, 
though he may be both great and good, never can be amiable. 
No one was ever blessed with a larger portion of those gifts 
and graces which make up the measure of an amiable and 
happy man. 

It will not be thought, then, that I have repeated with any- 
disrespectful intention what was said of Wilberforce by Mr. 
Pitt. The observation was brought to mind while 1 was 
thinking how many passages in these volumes were com- 
posed with a double intention, one for the public and for pos- 
terity, the other private and personal, written with special 
pleasure on my part, speciali gratid, for the sake of certain 
individuals. Some of these, which are calculated for the me- 



100 THE DOCTOR. 

ridian of Doncaster, the commentators may possibly, il ihey 
make due research, discover ; but there are others which no 
ingenuity can detect. Their quintessence exhales when the 
private, which was in these cases the primary intention, has 
been fulfilled. Yet the consciousness of the emotions which 
those passages will excite, the recollections they will awa- 
ken, the surprise and the smile with which they will be re- 
ceived — yea, and the melancholy gratification — even to tears 
— which they will impart, has been one and not the least of 
the many pleasures which I have experienced while em- 
ployed upon this work. 

IIoXAa iJioi {itt' ayKoj- 
-vos u)Kea (3iXt] 
"KvSov ivri (^apirpai 
^(j)vavTa cwzTolaiv.* 

But while thus declaring that these volumes contain much 
covert intention of this kind, I utterly disclaim all covert ma- 
levolence. My roving shafts are more harmless even than 
bird bolts, and can hurt none on whom they fall. The ar- 
rows with which I aim, carry tokens of remembrance and 
love, and may be likened to those by which intelligence has 
been conveyed into besieged places. Of such it is that I 
have been speaking. Others, indeed, I have in the quiver 
which are pointed and barbed. 

ijiQi nlv Civ Motffa Kaprepoj- 
-Tarov PeXos dXKq Tpe<pei.* 

When one of these is let fly, (with sure aim and never with- 
out just cause,) it has its address written on the shaft at full 
length, like that which Aster directed from the walls of Me- 
thone to Philip's right eye. 

" Or' c'est assez s' estre esgare de son grand chemin : j'y 
retourne et le bats, et le trace comme devant."f 

* Pindar. t Brantome. 



THE DOCTOR. 101 



CHAPTER LXXVIII. P. I. 

AMATORY POETRV NOT ALWAYS OF THE WISEST KIND AN AT- 
TEMPT TO CONVEY SOME NOTION OF ITS QUANTITY TRUE 

LOVE, THOUGH NOT IN EVERY CASE THE BEST POET, THE 
BEST MORALIST ALWAYS. 

El amor es tan ingenioso, que en mi opinion, mas poetas ha hecho el 
solo, que la misma naturaleza. — Perez de Montalvan. 

I RETURN to the loves of Leonard and Margaret. 

That poet asked little from his mistres - v. ho entreated her 
to bestow upon him, not a whole look, for this would have 
been too great a mercy for a miserable lover, but part of a 
look, whether it came from the white of her eye, or the 
black ; and, if even that were too much, then he besought 
her only to seem to look at him : — 

Un guardo— un guardo ? no, troppo pietate 

E per misero amante un guardo intero ; 
Solo un de' vostri raggi, occhi girate, 

O parte del bel bianco, o del bel nero. 
E se troppo vi par, non mi mirate ; 

Ma fate sol sembiante di mirarmi, 

Che nolpotete far senza bearmi.* 

This is a new thought in amatory poetry ; and the difficulty 
of striking out a new thought in such poetry, is of all difficul- 
ties the greatest. Think of a look from the white of an eye ! 
Even part of a look, however, is more than a lady will be- 
stow upon one whom she does not favour, and more than 
one whom she favours will consent to part with. An Innam- 
orato Furioso in one of Dryden's tragedies says — 

" I'll not one corner of a glance resign !" 

Poor Robert Greene, whose repentance has not been dis- 
regarded by just posterity, asked his mistress in his licentious 
days to look upon him with one eye : (no doubt he meant a 
sheep's eye :) this also was a new thought ; and he gave the 
reason for his request in this sonnet : — 

" On women nature did bestow two eyes, 
Like heaven's bright lamps, in matchless beauty shining, 
Whose beams do soonest captivate the wise, 



15 



102 THE DOCTOR. 

And wary heads, made rare by art's refining. 
But why did nature, in her choice combining, 
Plant two fair eyes within a beauteous face. 
That they might favour two with equal grace ? 
Venus did soothe up Vulcan with one eye. 
With the other granted Mars his wished glee. 
If she did so whom Hymen did defy, 
Think love no sin, but grant an eye to me ! 
In vain else nature gave two stars to thee. 
If then two eyes may well two friends maintain, 
Allow of two, and prove not nature vain." 

Love, they say, invented the art of tracing likenesses, and 
thereby led the way to portrait painting-. Some painters it 
has certainly made ; whether it ever made a poet may be 
doubted ; but there can be no doubt that under its inspiration 
more bad poetry has been produced than by any or all other 
causes. 

Haecvia jam cunctis nota est, haec tritapoetis 
Materia, banc omnis tractac ubique liber.* 

As the most forward bud 
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow. 
Even so by love the young and tender wit 
Is turn'd to folly.f 

Vanity, presumption, ambition, adulation, malice, and folly ; 
flatulent emptiriess and ill-digested fulness, misdirected tal- 
ent and misapplied devotion, wantonness and want, good 
motives, bad motives, and mixed motives, have given birth 
to verses in such numberless numbers, that the great lake of 
oblivion in which they have sunk must long ago have been 
filled up, if there had been any bottom to it. But had it been 
so filled up, and a foundation thus laid, the quantity of love 
poems which have gone to the same place would have made 
a pile there that would have been the eighth wonder of the 
world. It would have dwarfed the pyramids. Pelion upon 
Ossa would have seemed but a type of it ; and the tower of 
Babel would not, even when that tower was at its highest 
elevation, have overtopped it, though the old rhyme says 
that 

" Seven mile sank, and seven mile fell. 
And seven mile still stand, and ever shall." 

Ce n'est que feu de leurs froids chaleurs, 
Ce n'est qu' horreur de leurs feintes douleurs, 
Ce n'est encor de leurs souspirs et pleurs. 

Que vents, pluye, et orages : 
Et bref, ce n'est a ouir leurs chansons, 
De leurs amours, que flammes et glagons, 
Fleches, liens, et mille autres faqons, 

De semblables outrages 

* Scauranus t Shakspeare. 



THE DOCTOR. 103 

De voz beautez, ce n'est que tout fin or, 
Perles, crystal, marbre, et ivoyre encor, 
Et toutl'honneurde I'lndique thresor, 

Fleurs, lis, ceillets, et roses : 
De voz doulceurs ce n'est que succre et miel, 
" De voz rigueures, n'est qu' aloes, et fiel, 

De voz esprits c'est tous ce que le ciel 
Tient de graces encloses. 
# # # « 

II n'y a roc, qui n'entende leurs voix, 
Leurs piteux cris ont faict cent mille fois 
leurer les monts, les plaines, et les bois, 

Les antres et fonteines. 
Bref, il n'y a ny solitaires lieux, 
N'y lieux hantez, voyre mesmes les cieux, 
Qui Qa et la ne montrent a leurs yeux 

L'image de leurs peines. 

Cestuy-la porte en son cueur fluctueux 
De I'ocean les flots tumultueux, 
Cestuy I'horreur des vents impetueux 

Sortans de leur caverne : 
L'un d'un Caucase, et Mongibel se plaingt, 
L'autre en viellant plus de songes se peingt, 
Qu'il n'en fut onq'en cest orme, qu'on feinct 

En la fosse d'Averne. 
Qui contrefaict ce Tantale mourant 
Brusle de soif au milieu d'un torrent. 

Qui repaissant un ai^le devorant, 
S'accoustre en Promethee : 
Et qui encor, par un plus chaste voeu. 
En se bruslant, veult Hercule estre veu, 
Mais qui se mue en eau, air, terre, et feu, 

Comme un second Protee. 

L'un meurt de froid, et l'autre meurt de chauld, 
L'un vole bas, et l'autre vole hault, 
L'un est chetif, l'autre a ce qui luy fault ; 

L'un sur I'esprit se fonde, 
L'autre s'arreste a la beaute du corps ; 
On ne vid onq' si horribles discords 
En ce cahos, qui troubloit les accords 

Dont fut basty le monde.* 

But, on the other hand, if love, simple love, is the worst of 
poets, that same simple love is beyond comparison the best 
of letter writers. In love poems conceits are distilled from 
the head ; in love letters feelings flow from the heart ; and 
feelings are never so feelingly uttered, affection never so 
affectionately expressed, truth never so truly spoken, as in 
such a correspondence. Oh, if the disposition which exists 
at such times were sustained through life, marriage woiiji 
then be indeed the perfect union, the " excellent mystery*'^ 
which our Father requires from those who enter into it, that 
it should be made ; and which it might always be, under his 

* Joachim du Bellay. 



104: THE DOCTOR. 

blessing, were it not for the misconduct of one or the othei 
party, or of both. If such a disposition were maintained — 
" if the love of husbands and wives were grounded (as it then 
would be) in virtue and religion, it would make their lives a 
kind of heaven on earth ; it would prevent all those conten- 
tions and brawlings which are the great plagues of families, 
and the lesser hell in passage to the greater." Let no reader 
think the worse of that sentence because it is taken from 
that good homely eld book, the better for being homely, en- 
titled the Whole Duty of Man. 

I once met with a book in which a servant girl hnd written 
on a blank leaf, " Not much love after marriage, but a good deal 
before V In her station of life this is but too true ; and in 
high stations also, and in all those intermediate grades where 
either the folhes of the world, or its cares, exercise over us 
an unwholesome influence. But it is not so with well con- 
stituted minds in those favourable circumstances wherein 
the heart is neither corrupted by wealth, nor hardened by 
neediness. So far as the tendency of modern usages is to 
diminish the number of persons who are thus circumstanced, 
in that same proportion must the sum of happiness be dimin- 
ished, and of those virtues which are the only safeguard of 
a nation. And that modern policy and modern manners have 
this tendency, must be apparent to every one who observes 
the course both of public and private hfe. 

This girl had picked up a sad maxim from the experience 
of others ; I hope it did not as a consequence make her be- 
stow too much love before marriage herself, and meet with 
too little after it. I have said much of worthless verses 
upon this subject ; take now, readers, some that may truly 
be called worthy of it. They are by the Manchester poet, 
Charles Swain. 

1. 

" Love ? — I will tell thee what it is to love ! 

It is to build with human thoughts a shrine, 

Where Hope sits brooding hke a beauteous dove ; 

Where time seems young, and life a thing divine. 

All tastes, all pleasures, all desires combine 

To consecrate this sanctuary of bliss. 

Above, the stars in shroudless beauty shine ; 

Around, the streams their flowery margins kiss ; 
And if there's heaven on earth, that heaven is surely this 

2. 

"Yes, this is love, the steadfast and the true, 
The immortal glory which hath never set ; 
The best, the brightest boon the heart e'er knew : 
Of all hfe's sweets the very sweetest yet ! 
Oh ! who but can recall the eve they met 
To breathe, in some green walk, their first young vow, 
Wiiile summer flowers with moonlight dews were wet, 



THE DOCTOR. 105 

And winds sigh'd soft around the mountain's brow, 
And all was rapture then which is but memory now !" 

The dream of life indeed can last with none of us, 

As if the thing beloved were all a saint, 
And every place she entered were a shrine :* 

but it must be our own fault, when it has passed away, if the 
realities disappoint us : they are not " weary, stale, flat, and 
unprofitable," unless we ourselves render them so. The 
preservation of the species is not the sole end for which love 
was implanted in the human heart ; that end the Almighty 
might as easily have effected by other means : not so the 
development of our moral nature, which is its higher pur- 
pose. The comic poet asserts that 

Verum illud verbum est vulgo quod dici solet, 
Omnes sibi esse melius malle, quam alteri :t 

but this is not true in love. The lover never says 

Heus proximus sum egomet mihi ;t 

he knows and understands the falsehood of the Greek adage, 

" f^iXel S' iavTov ■r:\u.ov ovSeig oh^ha ;" 

and not lovers alone, but husbands, and wives, and parents 
feel that there are others who are dearer to them than them- 
selves. Little do they know of human nature who speak of 
marriage as doubling our pleasures and dividing our griefs ; 
it doubles, or more than doubles both. 

* Gondibert. + Terence. 



106 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER LXXIX. P. I. 

AN EARLY BEREAVEMENT TRUE LOVE ITS OWN COMFORTER A 

LONELY FATHER AND AN ONLY CHILD. 

Read ye that run the awful truth, 

With which 1 charge my page ; 
A worm is in the bud of youth, 

And at the root of age, 

COWPER. 

Leonard was not more than eight-and-twenty when he 
obtained a living, a few miles from Doncaster. He took his 
bride with him to the vicarage. The house was as humble 
as the benefice, which was worth less than 50/. a year ; but 
it was soon made the neatest cottage in the country round, 
and upon a happier dwelling the sun never shone. A few 
acres of good glebe were attached to it ; and the garden was 
large enough to afford healthful and pleasurable employment 
to its owners. The course of true love never ran more 
smoothly ; but its course was short. 

Oh how this spring of love resembleth 

The uncertain glory of an April day, 
Which nov/ shows all the beauty of the sun, 

And by-and-by a cloud takes all away ! * 

Little more than five years from the time of their marriage 
had elapsed, before a headstone in the adjacent churchyard 
told where the remains of Margaret Bacon had been deposited 
in the thirtieth year of her age. 

When the stupor and the agony of that bereavement had 
passed away, the very intensity of Leonard's affection be- 
came a source of consolation. Margaret had been to him a 
purely ideal object during the years of his youth; death had 
again rendered her such. Imagination had beautified and 
idolized her then; faith sanctified and glorified her now. 
She had been to him on earth all that he had fancied, all that 
he had hoped, all that he had desired. She would again be 
so in heaven. And this second union nothing could impede, 
nothing could interrupt, nothing could dissolve. He had 
only to keep himself worthy of it by cherishing her memory, 
hallowing his heart to it while he performed a parent's duty 
to their child; and so doing to await his own summons, 

* Shakspeare. 



THE DOCTOR. 107 

which must one day come, which every day was brought 
nearer, and which any day might bring. 

'Tis the only discipline we are born for ; 
All studies else are but as circular lines, 
And death the centre where they must all meet.* 

The same feeling which from his childhood had refined 
Leonard's heart, keeping it pure and undefiled, had also cor- 
roborated the natural strength Of his character, and made 
him firm of purpose. It was a saying of Bishop Andrews 
that "good husbandry is good divinity;" " the truth whereof," 
says Fuller, "no wise man will deny." Frugality he had 
always practised as a needful virtue, and found that in an 
especial manner it brings with it its own reward. He now 
resolved upon scrupulously setting apart a fourth of his 
small income to make a provision for his child, in case of 
her surviving him, as in the natural course of things might 
be expected. If she should be removed before him — for this 
was an event the possibility of which he always bore in 
mind — he had resolved that whatever should have been ac- 
cumulated with this intent, should be disposed of to some 
other pious purpose, for such, within the limits to which his 
poor means extended, he properly considered this. And 
having entered on this prudential course with a calm reliance 
upon Providence in case his hour should come before that 
purpose could be accomplished, he was without any earthly 
hope or fear — those alone excepted, from which no parent 
can be free. 

The child had been christened Deborah after her maternal 
grandmother, for whom Leonard ever gratefully retained a 
most affectionate and reverential remembrance. She was a 
healthy, happy creature in body and in mind ; at first 

one of those little prating girls 
Of whom fond parents tell such tedious stones ;t 

afterward, as she grew up, a favourite with the village 
schoolmistress, and with the whole parish; docile, good 
natured, lively and yet considerate, always gay as the lark 
and busy as a bee. One of the pensive pleasures in which 
Leonard indulged was to gaze on her unperceived, and trace 
the likeness to her mother. 

Oh Christ ! 
How that which was the life's life of our being, 
Can pass away, and we recall it thus If 

That resemblance which was strong in childhood, lessened 

* Massinger, f Dryden. t Isaac Comnenus. 



108 THE DOCTOR. 

as the child grew up ; for Margaret's countenance had ac- 
quired a cast of meek melancholy during those years in 
which the bread of bitterness had been her portion; and 
when hope came to her, it was that *' hope deferred" which 
takes from the cheek its bloom, even when the heart, instead 
of being made sick, is sustained by it. But no unhappy cir- 
cumstances depressed the constitutional buoyancy of hei 
daughter's spirits. Deborah brought into the world the hap- 
piest of all nature's endowments, an easy temper and a light 
heart. Resembiant therefore as the features were, the dis- 
simihtude of expression was more apparent ; and when Leon- 
ard contrasted in thought the sunshine of hilarity that lit 
up his daughter's face, with the sort of moonlight loveliness 
which had given a serene and saintlike character to her 
mother's, he wished to persuade himself that as the early 
translation of the one seemed to have been thus prefigured, 
the other might be destined to live for the happiness of others 
till a good old age, while length of years in their course 
should ripen her for heaven. 



CHAPTER LXXX. P. I. 

OBSERVATIONS WHICH SHOW THAT WHATEVER PRIDE MEN MAY 
TAKE IN THE APPELLATIONS THEY ACQUIRE IN THEIR PRO- 
GRESS THROUGH THE WORLD, THEIR DEAREST NAatE DIES BEFORE 
THEM. 

Thus they who reach 
Gray hairs, die piecemeal. 

SOUTHEY. 

The name of Leonard must now be dropped as we proceed. 
Some of the South American tribes, among whom the Jesuits 
laboured with such exemplary zeal, and who take their per- 
sonal appellations, (as most names were originally derived,) 
from beasts, birds, plants, and other visible objects, abolish, 
upon the death of every individual, the name by which he 
was called, and invent another for the thing from which it 
was taken, so that their language, owing to this curiously 
inconvenient custom, is in a state of continual change. An 
abohtion almost as complete with regard to the person had 
taken place in the present instance. The name Leonard 
was consecrated to him by all his dearest and fondest recol- 
lections. He had been known by it on his mother's knees, 
and in the humble cottage of that aunt who had been to him 
a second mother ; and by the wife of his bosom, his first, 



THE DOCTOR. 109 

last, and only love. Margaret had never spoken to him, 
never thought of him, by any other name. From the hour 
of her death no human voice ever addressed him by it again. 
He never heard himself so called, except in dreams. It ex- 
isted only in the dead letter ; he signed it mechanically in 
the course of business, but it had ceased to be a living name. 

Men willingly prefix a handle to their names, and tack on 
to them any two or more honorary letters of the alphabet as 
a tail ; they drop their surnames for a dignity, and change 
them for an estate or a title. They are pleased to be doc- 
tor'd and professor'd ; to be captain'd, major'd, colonel'd, 
general'd, or admiral'd ; to be Sir John'd, my lorded, or your- 
graced. " You and 1," says Cranmer m his Answer to 
Gardiner's book upon Transubstantiation — " you and 1 were 
delivered from our surnames when we were consecrated 
bishops ; sithence which time we have so commonly been 
used of all men to be called bishops, you of Winchester, 
and I of Canterbury, that the most part of the people know 
not that your name is Gardiner, and mine Cranmer. And I 
pray God, that we being called to the name of lords, have 
not forgotten our own baser estates, that once we were 
simple squires !" But the emotion with which the most 
-successful suitor of fortune hears himself first addressed by 
a new and honourable title, conferred upon him for his pub- 
lic deserts, touches his heart less (if that heart be sound at 
the core) than when, after long absence, some one who is 
privileged so to use it, accosts him by his Christian name, 
that household name which he has never heard but from his 
nearest relations and his old familiar friends. By this it is 
that we are known to all around us in childhood ; it is used 
only by our parents and our nearest kin when that stage is 
past ; and as they drop off, it dies as to its oral uses with them. 

It is because we are remembered more naturally in our 
family and paternal circles by our baptismal than our heredi- 
tary names, and remember ourselves more naturally by them, 
that the Roman Catholic, renouncing, upon a principle of 
perverted piety, all natural ties when he enters a convent and 
voluntarily dies to the world, assumes a new one. This is 
one manifestation of that intense selfishness which the law 
of monastic life inculcates, and affects to sanctify. Alas, 
there need no motives of erroneous religion to wean us from 
the ties of blood and of affection ! They are weakened and 
dissolved by fatal circumstances and the ways of the world, 
too frequently and too soon. 

" Our men of rank," said my friend one day when he was 
speaking upon this subject, " are not the only persons who 
go by different appellations in different parts of their lives. 
We all moult our names in the natural course of life. 1 was 
Dan in my father's house, and should still be so with my 
uncle William and Mr. Guy if they were still living. Upon 
15* 



110 THE DOCTOR. 

my removal to Doncaster my master and mistress called me 
Daniel, and my acquaintance Dove. In Holland I was 
Mynheer Duif. Now I am the doctor, and not among my 
patients only ; friends, acquaintances, and strangers address 
me by this appellation ; even my wife calls me by no other 
name ; and I shall never be anything but the doctor again, 
till I am registered at my burial by the same names as at my 
christening." 



CHAPTER LXXXI. P. I. 

A QUESTION WHETHER LOVE SHOULD BE FAITHFUL TO THE DEAD 

DOUBTS ADVANCED AND CASES STATED. 

Oh even in spite of death, yet still my choice, 
Oft with the inward all-beholding eye 
I tliink I see thee, and I hear thy voice ! 

Lord Sterline. 

In the once popular romance of Astrea the question Si 
amour pent mourir par la mort de la chose aimee ? is debated 
in reference to the faithful shepherd, Tyrcis, who having lost 
his mistress Cleon, (Cleon serving for a name feminine in 
French, as Stella has done in English,) and continuing con- 
stant to her memory, is persecuted by the pertinacious ad- 
vances of Laonice. The sage shepherd, Sylvandre, before 
whom the point is argued, and to whom it is referred for 
judgment, delivers, to the great disappointment of the lady, 
the following sentence : " Qu'une amour perissable n'est 
pas vray amour ; car il doit suivre le sujet qui luy a donne 
naissance. C'est pourquoy ceux qui ont aime le corps seule- 
ment, doivent enclorre toutes les amours du corps dans le 
mesme tombeau ou il s'enserre : mais ceux qui outre cela 
ont aime I'esprit, doivent avec leur amour voler apres cet 
esprit aime jusques au plus haut ciel, sans que les distances 
les puissent separer." 

The character of a constant mourner is sometimes intro- 
duced in romances of the earlier and nobler class ; but it is 
rare in those works of fiction, and indeed it is not common 
in what has happily been called the romance of real life. 
Let me however restrict this assertion within its proper 
bounds. What is meant to be here asserted, (and it is perti- 
nent to this part of our story,) is, that it is not common for 
any one who has been left a widow, or widower, early in hfe, 
to remain so always out of pure affection to the memory of 
the dead, unmingled with any other consideration or cause. 



THE DOCTOR. Ill 

Such constancy can be found only where there is the union 
of a strong imagination and a strong heart, which, perhaps, 
is a rare union ; and if to these a strong mind be united, the 
effect would probably be different. 

It is only in a strong imagination that the deceased object 
of affection can retain so firm a hold, as never to be dispos- 
sessed from it by a living one ; and when the imagination is 
thus possessed, unless the heart be strong, the heart itself, 
or the intellect, is likely to give way. A deep sense of reli- 
gion would avert the latter alternative ; but I will not say 
that it is any preservative against the former. 

A most affecting instance of this kind is related by Dr. 
Uwins in his Treatise on Disorders of the Brain. A lady on 
the point of marriage, whose intended husband usually trav- 
elled by the stage coach to visit her, went one day to meet 
him, and found instead of him an old friend who came to 
announce to her the tidings of his sudden death. She ut- 
tered a scream, and piteously exclaimed, " He is dead !" But 
then all consciousness of the affliction that had befallen her 
ceased. " From that fatal moment," says the author, " has 
this unfortunate female daily for fifty years, in all seasons, 
traversed the distance of a few miles to the spot where she 
expected her future husband to alight from the coach ; and 
every day she utters in a plaintive tone, ' He is not come 
yet ! I will return to-morrow !' " 

There is a more remarkable case in which love, after it 
had long been apparently extinct, produced a like effect upon 
being accidentally revived. It is recorded in a Glasgow 
newspaper. An old man residing in the neighbourhood of 
that city found a miniature of his wife, taken in her youth. 
She had been dead many years, and he was a person of 
strictly sedate and religious habits ; but the sight of this 
picture overcame him. From the time of its discovery till 
his death, which took place some months afterward, he 
neglected all his ordinary duties and employments, and be- 
came in a manner imbecile, spending whole days without 
uttering a word, or manifesting the slightest interest in 
passing occurrences. The only one with whom he would 
hold any communication was a little grandchild, who stri- 
kingly resembled the portrait ; to her he was perfectly docile ; 
and a day or two before his death, he gave her his purse, 
and strictly enjoined her to lay the picture beside him in his 
coffin — a request which was accordingly fulfilled. 

Mr. Newton of Olney says, that once in the West Indies, 
upon not receiving letters from his wife in England, he con- 
cluded that surely she was dead, and this apprehension 
affected him so much that he was nearly sinking under it. 
" I felt," says he, " some severe symptoms of that mixture 
of pride and madness which is commonly called a broken 
heart ; and, indeed, I wonder that this case is not more 



112 TUE DOCTOR. 

common than it appears to be. How often do the potsherds 
of the earth presume to contend with their Maker ! and what 
a wonder of mercy is it that they are not all broken !" 

This is a stern opinion; and he who delivered it held 
stern tenets, though in his own disposition compassionate 
and tender. He was one who could project his feelings, and 
relieve himself in the effort. No husband ever loved his 
wife more 4)assionately, nor with a more imaginative affec- 
tion ; the long and wasting disease by which she was con- 
sumed, affected him proportionably to this deep attachment; 
but immediately upon her death he roused himself, after the 
example of David, threw off his grief, and preached her 
funeral sermon. He ought to have known that this kind of 
strength and in this degree, is given to very few of us ; that 
a heart may break, even though it be thoroughly resigned to 
the will of God, and acquiesces in it, and has a lively faith in 
God's mercies ; yea, that this very resignation, this entire 
acquiescence, this sure and certain hope, may even accele- 
rate its breaking ; and a soul thus chastened, thus purified, 
thus ripened for immortality, may unconsciously work out 
the deliverance which it ardently, but piously withal, desires. 

What were the doctor's thoughts upon this subject, and 
others connected with it, will appear in the proper place. 
It is touched upon here in relation to Leonard. His love 
for Margaret might be said to have begun with her hfe, and 
it lasted as long as his own. No thought of a second mar- 
riage even entered his mind ; though in the case of another 
person, his calm views of human nature and of the course of 
life would have led him to advise it. 



CHAPTER LXXXH. P. I. 

THK DOCTOR IS INTRODUCED, BY THE SMALLPOX, TO HIS FUTURE 
WIFE. 

Long-waiting love doth entrance find 
Into the slow-believing mind. 

Sydney Godolphin. 

When Deborah was about nineteen, the smallpox broke out 
in Doncaster, and soon spread over the surrounding country, 
occasioning everywhere a great mortality. At that time in- 
oculation had very rarely been practised in the provinces ; 
and the prejudice against it was' so strong that Mr. Bacon, 
though convinced in his own mind that the practice was 
not only lawful, but advisable, refrained from having his 



THE DOCTOR. 113 

daughter inoculated till the disease appeared in his own 
parish. He had been induced to defer it during her child- 
hood, partly because he was unwilling to offend the prejudices 
of his parishioners, which he hoped to overcome by persua- 
sion and reasoning when time and opportunity might favour ; 
still more because he thought it unjustifiable to introduce such 
a disease into his own house, with imminent risk of commu- 
nicating it to others, v/hich were otherwise in no danger, in 
which the same preparations would not be made, and where 
consequently the danger would be greater. But when the 
malady had shown itself in the parish, then he felt that his 
duty as a parent required him to take the best apparent 
means for the preservation of his child ; and that as a pastor 
also it became him now in his own family to set an example 
to his parishioners. 

Deborah, who had the most perfect reliance upon her 
father's judgment, and lived in entire accordance with his 
will in all things, readily consented ; and seemed to regard 
the beneficial consequences of the experiment to others with 
hope, rather than to look with apprehension to it for herself. 
Mr. Bacon therefore went to Doncaster and called upon Dr. 
Dove. " 1 do not," said he, " ask whether you would advise 
me to have my daughter inoculated ; where so great a risk 
is to be incurred, in the case of an only child, you might 
hesitate to advise it. But if you see nothing in her present 
state of health, or in her constitutional tendencies, which 
would render it more than ordinarily dangerous, it is her own 
wish and mine, after due consideration on my part, that she 
should be committed to your care — putting our trust in 
Providence." 

Hitherto there had been no acquaintance between Mr. Bacon 
and the doctor, further than that they knew each other by 
sight and by good report. This circumstance led to a growing 
intimacy. During the course of his attendance the doctor 
fell in friendship with the father, and the father with him. 

" Did he fall in love with his patient ?' 

No, ladies. 

You have already heard that he once fell in love, and how 
it happened. And you have also been informed that he 
caught love once, though I have not told you how, because 
it would have led me into too melancholy a tale. In this 
case, he neither fell in love, nor caught it, nor ran into it, nor 
walked into it ; nor was he overtaken in it, as a boon compan- 
ion is in liquor, or a runaway in his flight. Yet there was 
love between the parties at last, and it was love for love, to 
the heart's content of both. How this came to pass will be 
related at the proper time and in the proper place. 

For he e let me set before the judicious reader certain 
pertinent remarks by the pious and well-known author of a 
popular 1 realise on the Right Use of Reason a treatise 



114 THE DOCTOR. 

which has been much read to little purpose. That author 
observes, that " those writers and speakers, whose chief 
business is to amuse or delight, to allure, terrify, or persuade 
mankind, do not confine themselves to any natural order, but 
in a cryptical or hidden method, adapt eveiything to their 
designed ends. Sometimes they omit those things which 
might injure their design, or grow tedious to their hearers, 
though they seem to have a necessary relation to the point 
in hand ; sometimes they add those things which have no 
great reference to the subject, but are suited to allure or 
refresh the mind and the ear. They dilate sometimes, and 
flourish long upon little incidents; and they skip over and 
but lightly touch the drier part of the theme. They omit 
things essential which are not beautiful ; they insert little 
needless circumstances and beautiful digressions ; they in- 
vert times and actions, in order to place everything in the 
most afi'ecting light ; they place the first things last, and the 
last things first, with wondrous art ; and yet so manage it as 
to conceal their artifice, and lead the senses and passions 
of their hearers into a pleasing and powerful captivity." 



CHAPTER LXXXIII. P. I. 

THE AUTHOR REQUESTS THE READER NOT TO BE IMPATIENT 

SHOWS FROM LORD SHAFTESBURY AT WHAT RATE A JUDICIOUS 
WRITER OUGHT TO PROCEED — DISCLAIMS PROLIXITY- FOR HIM- 
SELF, AND GIVES EXAMPLES OF IT IN A GERMAN PROFESSOR, 
A JEWISH RABBI, AND TWO COUNSELLORS, ENGLISH AND AMER- 
ICAN. 

Pand. He that will have a cake out of the wheat, must tarry the 
grinding. 

Troilus. Have I not tarried ? 

Paiid. Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting. 

Troilus. Have I not tarried ? 

Pand. Ay, the bolting ; but you must tarry the leavening. 

Troilus. Still have I tarried. 

Pand. Ay, to the leavening : but here's j'et in the word hereafter, the 
kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven, and the baking ; 
nay, you must stay the cooling too, or y-ou may chance to bum your lips. 
— Troilus and Cressida. 

I PASSED over fourteen years of the doctor's boyhood and 
adolescence, as it may be remembered was stated in the 
twenty-fifth chapter ; but I must not in like manner pass over 
the years that intervened between his first acquaintance with 
Deborah Bacon, and the happy day whereon the bells of St 



THE DOCTOR. 115 

George's welcomed her to Doncaster as his bride. It would 
be as inconsistent with my design to pretermit this latter 
portion of his life, as it would have been incompatible with 
my limits to have recorded the details of the former, worthy 
to be recorded as they were. If any of my readers should 
be impatient on this occasion, and think that I ought to have 
proceeded to the marriage without delay, or at least to the 
courtship, I must admonish them in the words of a Turkish 
saying, that " Hurry comes from the devil, and slow advanc- 
ing from Allah." " Needs must go when the devil drives," 
says the proverb ; but the devil shall never drive me. I will 
take care never to go at such a rate " as if haste had maimed 
speed by overrunning it at starting." 

" The just composer of a legitimate piece," says Lord 
Shaftesbury, " is like an able traveller, who exactly measures 
his journey, considers his ground, premeditates his stages 
and intervals of relaxation and intention, to the very conclu- 
sion of his undertaking, that he happily arrives where he 
first proposed at setting out. He is not presently upon the 
spur, or in his full career, but walks his steed leisurely out 
of the stable, settles himself in his stirrups, and when fair 
road and season offer, puts on, perhaps, to a round trot, 
thence into a gallop, and after a while takes up. As down, 
or meadow, or shady lane present themselves, he accord- 
ingly suits his pace, favours his palfrey, and is sure not to 
bring him puffing and in a heat into his last inn." 

Yes, reader, 

matter needless, of importless burden* 

may as little be expected to flow from the slit of my pen, as 
to "divide the lips" of wise Ulysses. On the other hand, 
what is needful, what is weighty in its import, let who will 
be impatient, must not be left unsaid. 

varie fila a varie tele 
Uopo mi son, che tutte ordire intendcf 

It is affirmed by the angelic doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, 
that of corporeal things the quantity is in proportion to the 
quality, that which is best being always in the same degree 
the greatest. " Thus in this our universe," he says, " the 
water is more than the earth, the air more than the water, 
the fire more than the air : the first heaven larger than the 
sphere of fire, the second than the first, the third than the 
second ; and so they proceed increasing to the tenth sphere, 
and to the empyrean, which is, inestimabilis et incomparabilis 
magnitudinis,''^ 

Upon the principle which this greatest of the schoolmen 

* Troilus and Cressida. t Ariosto. 



116 THE DOCTOR. 

has assumed, I leave the reader to infer what would be the 
probable and proper extent of the present opus, were 1 to 
indulge my genius and render justice to the subject. 

To make it exceed in length the histories of Sir Charles 
Grandison and of Clarissa Harlowe, or the bulkier romances 
of Calprenede and the Scuderys, it would not be necessary 
to handle it in the manner of a lawyer who, having no more 
argument than would lie in a nut sheU, wiredraws it and 
hammers at it, and hammers at it and wiredraws it, and then 
wiredraws it and hammers at it again, like a lecturer who is 
exhibiting the infinite ductility of gold. 

" What a gift," says Fuller, " had John Halsebach, profes- 
sor at Vienna, in tediousness, who, being to expound the 
Prophet Isaiah to his auditors, read twenty-one years on the 
first chapter, and yet finished it not !" Mercator, in the de- 
scription of Austria in his atlas, has made mention of this 
arch-emperor of the spintexts. 

If I had been in John Halsebach's place, my exposition of 
that first chapter would have been comprised in one lecture, 
of no hungry or sleepy duration. But if John Halsebach 
were in mine, he would have filled more volumes than Rees's 
Cyclopedia with his account of Daniel Dove. 

And yet Rabbi Chananiah may contest the palm with the 
Vienna professor. It is recorded of him that when he un- 
dertook to write a commentary upon part of the Prophet 
Ezekiel, he required the Jews to supply him with three hun- 
dred tons of oil for the use of his lamp, while he should be 
engaged in it. 

It Is well known upon one of the English circuits that a 
leading barrister once undertook to speak while an express 
vv^ent twenty miles to bring back a witness whom it was ne- 
cessary to produce upon the trial. But what is this to the 
performance of an American counsellor, who upon a like 
emergency held the judge and the jury by their ears for three 
mortal days ! He indeed was put to his wits end, for words 
wherewith to fill up the time ; and he introduced so many 
truisms, and argued at the utmost length so many indisputa- 
ble points, and expatiated so profusely upon so many trite 
ones, that Judge Marshal (the biographer of Washington and 
the most patient of listeners) was so far moved at last as to 
sa)', " Mr. Such a one ! (addressing him by his name in a 
deliberate tone of the mildest reprehension,) there are some 
things with which the court should be supposed to be ac- 
quainted." 

I can say with Burton, " Malo decem potius verba, decies 
repetita licet, abundare, quam unum desiderari." " To say 
more than a man can say, I hold it not fit to be spoken ; but 
to say what a man ought to say — there" — with Simon the 
tanner of Queenborough — " I leave you." 



THE DOCTOR. 117 



CHAPTER LXXXIV. P. I. 

A LOOP DROPPED IN THE FOREGOING CHAPTER IS HERE TAKEN UP. 

Enobarhus. Every time 

Serves for the matter that is then bom in it, 
Lepidus. But small to greater matters must give way. 
Enoharbus. Not if the small come first. 

Shakspeake. 

In the last chapter an illustration of tediousness was omit- 
ted, because it so happily exhibits the manner in which a 
stop may be put to a tedious discourse without incivihty 
that it deserves a chapter to itself. 

When Madame de Stael resided at Copet, it was her cus- 
tom to collect around her in the evening a citcle of literati, 
the blue legs of Geneva, by some one of whom an essay, a 
disquisition, or a portion of a work in progress, was fre- 
quently read aloud to entertain the rest. Professor Dragg's 
History of Religion had occupied on one of those evenings 
more time than was thought necessary, or convenient, by the 
company, and especially by the lady of the chateau. It be- 
gan at the beginning of the world, and did not pass to the 
deluge with the rapidity which Dandin required from the 
pleader in Racine's comedy, who in like manner opened his 
case before the creation. Age after age rolled away over 
the professor's tongue, the course of which seemed to be in- 
terminable as that of the hand of the dial, while the clock 
struck the hour, and the quarter, and the half hour, and the 
third quarter, and then the whole hour again, and then again 
the quarters. " A tedious person," says Ben Jonson, " is 
one a man would leap a steeple from." Madame de Stael 
could tolerate nothing that was dry, except her father; but 
she could neither leap out of her own window, nor walk out 
of her own room, to escape from Professor Dragg. She 
looked wistfully round, and saw upon many a countenance 
an occasional and frequent movement about the lips, indica- 
ting that a yawn was at that moment painfully stifled in its 
birth. Dumont committed no such violence upon nature ; he 
had resigned himself to sleep. The professor went steadily 
on. Dumont slept audibly. The professor was deaf to 
every sound but that of his own voice. Madame de Stael 
was in despair. The professor coming to the end of an elo- 
quent chapter, declaimed with great force and vehemence 
the emphatic close, and prepared to begin the next. Just in 
that interstice of time, Dumont stirred and snorted. Madame 



118 THE DOCTOR. 

de Stael seized the opportunity ; she clapped her hands, and 
ejaculated Mon Dieul Voyez Dumontl II a dormi pendant 
deux siecles ! Dumont opened his eyes, and Professor Dragg 
closed his manuscript. 



CHAPTER LXXXV. P. I. 

THE doctor's contemporaries AT LEYDEN EARLY FRIENDSHIP 

COWPER's MELANCHOLY OBSERVATION THAT GOOD DISPOSI- 
TIONS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE CORRUPTED THAN EYIL ONES 

TO BE CORRECTED YOUTHFUL CONNECTIONS LOOSENED IN THE 

COMMON COURSE OF THINGS A FINE FRAGMENT BY WALTER 

LANDOR. 

Lass mich den Stunde gedenken, und jedes kleineren umstands. 

Ach, wer ruft nicht so gern unwiederbringliches an ! 
Jenes siisse Gedrange der leichtesten irdischen Tage, 

Ach, wer schatzt. ihn genug, diesen vereilenden Werth ! 
Klein ercheinet es nun, doch ach ! nicht kleinlich dern Herzen ; 

Macht die Liebe, die Kunst, jeghches Kieine doch gross. 

Goethe. 

The circumstances of my friend's boyhood and early youth, 
though singularly favourable to his peculiar cast of mind, in 
many or indeed most respects, were in this point disadvan- 
tageous, that they afforded him httle or no opportunity of 
forming those early friendships which, when they are well 
formed, contribute so largely to our future happiness. Per- 
haps the greatest advantage of pubUc education, as compared 
with private, is, that it presents more such opportunities than 
are ever met with in any subsequent stage of human life. And 
yet even then in friendship, as afterward in love, we are for 
the most part less directed by choice than by what is called 
chance. 

Daniel Dove never associated with so many persons of his 
own age at any other time as during his studies at Leyden. 
But he was a foreigner there, and this is almost as great an 
obstacle to friendship as to matrimony; and there were few 
Enghsh students among whom to choose. Dr. Brocklesby 
took his degree, and left the university the year before he 
entered it. Brocklesby was a person in whose society he 
might have delighted ; but he was a cruel experimentalist, 
and the dispathy which this must have excited in our friend, 
whose love of science, ardent as it was, never overcame the 
sense of humanity, would have counteracted the attraction 
of any intellectual powers, however brilliant. Akenside, 
with whom in many respects he would have felt himself in 



THE DOCTOR. 119 

uniscn, and by whose society he might have profited, gradu- 
ated also there just before his time. 

He had a contemporary more remarkable than either in his 
countryman John Wilkes, who was pursuing his studies 
there, not without some dihgence, under the superintendence 
of a private tutor ; and who obtained much notice for those 
lively and agreeable talents which were afterward so fla- 
grantly abused. But the strict and conscientious frugality 
which Dove observed rendered it unfit for him to associate 
with one who had a liberal allowance, and expended it lav- 
ishly: and there was also a stronger impediment to any 
intimacy between them ; for no talents, however companion- 
able, no quahties, however engaging, could have induced him 
to associate with a man whose irreligion was of the worst 
kind, and who delighted in licentious conversation. 

There was one of his countrymen indeed there, (so far as 
a Scotchman may be called so,) with whom he formed an 
acquaintance that might have ripened into intimacy, if their 
lots had fallen near to each other in after hfe. This was 
Thomas Dickson, a native of Dumfries; they attended the 
same lectures, and consorted on terms of friendly familiarity. 
But when their university course is completed men separate, 
like stage-coach travellers at the end of a journey, or fellow- 
passengers in a ship when they reach their port. While 
Dove " pursued the noiseless tenour of his way" at Doncas- 
ter, Dickson tried his fortune in the metropolis, where he 
became physician to the London Hospital, and a Fellow of 
the Royal Society. He died in the year 1784, and is said in 
his epitaph to have been " a man of smgular probity, loyalty, 
and humanity ; kind to his relations, beloved by all who 
knew him, learned and skilful in his profession. Unfeed by 
the poor, he lived to do good, and died a Christian believer." 
For a while some intercourse between him and the doctor 
had been kept up by letters ; but the intervals in their corres- 
pondence became longer and longer as each grew more en- 
gaged in business ; and new connections gradually effaced an 
impression which had not been made early, nor had ever 
been very deep. The friendship that with no intercourse to 
nourish it, keeps itself alive for years, must have strong roots 
in a good soil. 

Cowper regarded these early connections in an unfavour- 
able and melancholy mood. " For my own part," says he, 
" I found such friendships, though warm enough in their 
commencement, surprisingly liable to extinction; and of 
seven or eight whom I had selected for intimates out of 
about three hundred, in ten years time not one was left me. 
The truth is, that there may be, and often is, an attachment 
of one boy to another, that looks very like a friendship ; and 
while they are in circumstances that enable them mutually 
to oblige and to assist each other, promises well and bids 



120 THE DOCTOR. 

fair to be lasting. But they are no sooner separated from 
each other, by entering into the world at large, than other 
connections and new employments in which they no longer 
share together, efface the remembrance of what passed in 
earlier days, and they become strangers to each other for 
ever. Add to this, the man frequently differs so much from 
the boy — his principles, manners, temper, and conduct un- 
dergo so great an alteration — that we no longer recognise in 
him our old playfellow, but find him utterly unworthy and 
unfit for the place he once held in our affections." These 
sentiments he has also expressed in verse : — 

" school friendships are not always found, 
Though fair in promise, permanent and sound ; 
The most disinterested and virtuous minds 
In early years connected, time unbinds : 
New situations give a different cast 
Of habit, inclination, temper, taste ; 
And he that seem'd our counterpart at first. 
Soon shows the strong similitude reversed. 
Young heads are giddy, and young hearts are warm, 
And make mistakes for manhood to reform. 
Boys are, at best, but pretty buds unblown. 
Whose scent and hues are rather guessed than known , 
Each dreams that each is just what he appears, 
But learns his error in maturer years, 
. When disposition, like a sail unfurled. 
Shows all his rents and patches to the world." 

Disposition, however, is the one thing which undergoes no 
other change than that of growth in after life. The physical 
constitution, when any morbid principle is -innate in it, rarely 
alters : the moral constitution (except by a miracle of 
God's mercy) never. 

dv9p(t>T:ois 5' ael 
'O ixhi TTOiJtripdi, ovSh ciXXo ir^rjv kukos* 

"Believe if you will," say the Persians, "that a mountain 
has removed from one place to another ; but if you are told 
that a man has changed his nature, believe it not !" 

The best of us have but too much cause for making it 
part of our daily prayer that we fall into no sin ! But there 
is an original pravity which deserves to be so called in the 
darkest import of the term — an inborn and incurable disease 
of the moral being, manifested as soon as it has strength to 
show itself; and wherever this is perceived in earliest youth, 
it may too surely be predicted what is to be expected when 
all control of discipline is removed. Of those that bring 
with them such a disposition into the world, it cannot be said 
that they fall into sin, because it is too manifest that they 



* Euripides. 



THE DOCTOR. 121 

seek and pursue it as the bent of their nature. No wonder 
that wild theories have been devised to account for what is 
so mysterious, so awful, and yet so incontestable ! Zepha- 
niah Holwell, who will always be remembered for his suffer- 
ings in the Black Hole, wrote a strange book, in which he 
endeavoured to prove that men were fallen angels, that is, 
that human bodies are the forms in which fallen angels are 
condemned to suffer for the sins which they have committed 
in their former state. Akin to this is ihe Jewish fancy, held 
by Josephus, as well as his less liberalized countrymen, that 
the souls of wicked men deceased got into tiie bodies of the 
living and possessed them ; and by this agency they accounted 
for all diseases. Hoiwell's theory is no doubt as old as any 
part of the oriental systems of philosophy and figments ; it 
is one of the many vain attempts to account for that fallen 
nature of which every man who is sincere enough to look 
into his own heart finds there what may too truly be called 
an indwelling witness. Something like the Jewish notion 
was held by John Wesley and Adam Clarke ; and there are 
certain cases in which it is difficult not to admit it, especially 
when the question of the demoniacs is considered. Nor is 
there anything that shocks us in supposing this to be possi- 
ble for the body, and- the mind also, as depending upon the 
bodily organs. But that the moral being, the soul itself, the 
life of life, the immortal part, should appear, as so often it 
undoubtedly does, to be thus possessed, this indeed is of all 
mysterious things the darkest. 

For a disposition thus evil in its nature it almost seems as 
if there could be no hope. On the other hand, there is no 
security in a good one, if the support of good principles (that 
is to say, of religion, of Christian faith) be wanting. It may 
be soured by misfortunes, it may be corrupted by wealth, it 
may be blighted by neediness, it may lose " all its original 
brightness." 

School friendships arise out of sympathy of disposition at 
an age when the natural disposition is under little control 
and less disguise ; and there are reasons enough, of a less 
melancholy kind than Cowper contemplated, why so few of 
these blossoms set, and of those which afford a promise of 
fruit, why so small a proportion should bring it to maturity. 
" The amity that wisdom knits not folly may easily untie ;"* 
and even when not thus dissolved, the mutual attachment 
which in boyhood is continually strengthened by similarity 
of circumstance and pursuits, dies a natural death in most 
cases when that similarity ceases. If one goes north in the 
intellectual bearings of his course in life, and the other south, 
they will at last be far as the poles asunder. If their pur- 
suits are altogether different, and their opinions repugnant, 

* Shakspeare. 



122 THE DOCTOR. 

in the first case they cease to think of each other with any- 
warm interest ; in the second, if they think of each other at 
all, it is with an uncomfortable feehng, and a painful sense 
of change. 

The way in which too many ordinary minds are worsened 
by the mere course of time is finely delineated by Landor, 
in some verses which he designed as an imitation, not of a 
particular passage in a favourite Greek author, but of his 
manner and style of thought. 

*' Friendship, in each successive stage of life, 
As we approach him, varies to the view ; 
In youth he wears the face of Love himself. 
Of Love without his arrows and his wings. 
Soon afterward with Bacchus and with Pan 
Thou tindest him ; or hearest him resign, 
To some dog-pastor, by the quiet iire, 
With much good will and jocular adieu, 
His agewom mule, or brokenhearted steed. 
Fly not, as thou wert wont, to his embrace ; 
Lest, after one long yawning gaze, he swear 
Thou art the best good fellow in the world, 
But he had quite forgotten thee, by Jove ! 
Or laughter wag his newly bearded chin 
At recollection of his childish hours. 
But wouldst thou see, young man, his latest form, 
When e'en this laughter, e'en this memory fails, 
Look at yon fig-tree statue ! golden once. 
As all v/ould deem it, rottenness falls out 
At every little hole the worms have made ; 
And if thou triest to lift it up again 
It breaks upon thee ! Leave it ! touch in not 
Its very lightness would encumber thee. 
Come — thou hast seen it : 'tis enough ; be gone !" 

The admirable writer who composed these verses in some 
melancholy mood, is said to be himself one of the most con- 
stant and affectionate of friends. It may indeed safely be 
affirmed that generous minds, Avhen they have once known 
each other, never can be alienated as long as both retain the 
characteristics which brought them into union. No distance 
of place, or lapse of time, can lessen the friendship of those 
who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth. There 
are even some broken attachments in friendship, as well as 
in lOve, which nothing can destroy, and it sometimes hap- 
pens that we are not conscious of their strength till after the 
disruption. 

There are a few persons known to me in years long past, 
but with whom I lived in no particular intimacy then, and 
have held no correspondence since, whom I could not now 
meet without an emotion of pleasure deep enough to partake 
of pain, and w^ho, I doubt not, entertain for me feelings of 
the same kind and degree ; whose eyes sparkle when they 
hear, and ghsten sometimes when they speak of me ; and 



THE DOCTOR. 123 

who think of me as I do of them, with an affection that in- 
creases as we advance in years. This is because our moral 
and intellectual sympathies have strengthened ; and because, 
though far asunder, we know that we are travelling the 
same road towards our resting-place in heaven. " There is 
such a pleasure as this," says Cowper, " which would want 
explanation to some folks, being perhaps a mystery to those 
whose hearts are a mere muscle, and serve only for the 
purposes of an even circulation." 



CHAPTER LXXXVI. P. I. 

»>ETER HOPKINS REASONS FOR SUPPOSING THAT HE WAS AS 

GOOD A PRACTITIONER AS ANY IN ENGLAND ; THOUGH NOT THE 

BEST — THE FITTEST MASTER FOR DANIEL DOVE HIS SKILL IN 

ASTROLOGY. 

Que sea Medico mas grave 
Quien mas aforismos sabe, 

Bien puede ser. 
Mas que no sea mas experto 
El que mas huviere muerto, 

No puede ser. 

GONGORA. 

Of all the persons with whom Daniel Dove associated at 
Doncaster, the one who produced the most effect upon his 
mind was his master and benefactor, Peter Hopkins. The 
influence indeed which he exercised, insensibly as it were, 
upon his character, was little less than that whereby he di- 
rected and fixed the course of his fortune in life. A better 
professional teacher in his station could nowhere have been 
found ; for there was not a more skilful practitioner in the 
Three Ridings, consequently not in England ; consequently 
not in Christendom, and by a further consequence not in the 
world. Fuller says of Yorkshire that " one may call, and 
justify it to be the best shire in England : and that not by the 
help of the general katachresis of good for greaU (as a good 
blow, a good piece, &c.,) but in the proper acceptation thereof. 
If in Tully's orations, all being excellent, that is adjudged 
optima qucB longissima, the best which is the longest ; then by 
the same proportion, this shire, partaking in goodness alike 
with others, must be allowed the best." Yorkshire, there- 
fore, being the best county in England, as being the largest, 
of necessity it must have as good practitioners in medicine, as 
are to be found in any other county ; and there being no better 



124 THE DOCTOR. 

practitioner than Peter Hopkins there, it would have been in 
vain to seek for a better elsewhere. 
As good a one undoubtedly might have been found ; 

I trust there vv ere within this realm 
Five hundred as good as he,* 

though there goes more to the making of a Peter Hopkins 
than of an Earl Percy. But 1 very ranch doubt (and this is one 
of the cases in which doubt scarcely differs a shade from 
disbelief) whether there could anywhere have been found 
another person whose peculiarities would have accorded so 
curiously with young Daniel's natural bent, and previous 
education Hopkins had associated much with Guy, in the 
early part ci iheir lives ; (it was indeed through this connect- 
ion tha^ the lad was placed at Doncaster ;) and like Guy he 
had tampered with the mystical sciences. He knew the 
theories, and views, and hopes 

which set the chymist on 
To search that secret-natured stone, 
Which the philosophers have told, 
When found, turns all things into gold ; 
But being hunted and not caught. 
Oh ! sad reverse ! turns gold to naught. f 

This knowledge he had acquired, like his old friend, for 
its own sake — for the pure love of speculation and curious 
inquiry — not with the slightest intention of ever pursuing it 
for the desire of riches. He liked it because it was myste- 
rious ; and he could listen with a half-believing mind to the 
legends (as they may be called) of those adepts who from 
tmie to time have been heard of, living as erratic a life as the 
Wandering Jew ; but with this difference, that they are under 
no curse, and that they may forego their immortahty, if 
they do not choose to renew the lease of it, by taking a dose 
of the elixir in due time. 

He could cast a nativity with as much exactness, accord- 
ing to the rules of art, as William Lilly, or Henry Coley, that 
Merlinus Anglicus, Junior, upon whom Lilly's mantle de- 
scended ; or the Vicar of Thornton in Buckinghamshire, 
William Bredon, a profound divine, and " absolutely the most 
polite person for nativities in that age ;" who being Sir 
Christopher Heydon's chaplain, had a hand in composing that 
knight's defence of judicial astrology ; but withal was so 
given over to tobacco and drink, that when he had no to- 
bacco, he would cut the bell ropes, and smoke them. 

Peter Hopkins could erect a scheme either according to 
the method of Julius Firmicus, or of Aben Ezra, or of Cam- 
panus, Alcabitius, or Porphyrius, " for so many ways are 

* Chevy Chace. t Arbuthnot. 



THE DOCTOR. 125 

there of building these houses in the air ;" and in that other 
called the rational way, which in a great degree superseded 
the rest, and which Johannes MuUer, the great regioniontanus, 
gave to the world in his Tables of Directions drawn up at 
the Archbishop of Strigonia's request. He could talk of the 
fiery and the earthly trigons, the aerial and the watery ; and 
of that property of a triangle (now no longer regarded at 
Cambridge) whereby Sol and Jupiter, Luna and Venus, Sa 
turn and Mercury, respectively become joint trigonocrators, 
leaving Mars to rule over the watery trigon alone. He knew 
the twelve houses as familiarly as he knew his own ; the 
horoscope, which is the house of life, or more awfully to un- 
learned ears domus vitcB ; the house of gain and the house 
of fortune ; for gain and fortune no more keep house toge- 
ther in heaven, than either of them do with wisdom and vir 
tue and happiness on earth ; the hypogeum, or house of 
patrimony, which is at the lowest part of heaven, the imum 
cceli, though it be in many respects a good house to be born 
in here below ;the housesof children, of sickness, of marriage, 
and of death ; the house of religion ; the house of honours, 
which being the mesouranema, is also called the heart of 
heaven ; the agathodemon, or house of friends, and the caco- 
demon, or house of bondage. All these he knew, and their 
consignificators, and their chronocratorsoralfridarii, who give 
to these consignificators a septennial dominion in succession. 
He could ascertain the length of the planetary hour at any 
given time and place, anachronism being nowhere of greater 
consequence ; for if a degree be mistaken in the scheme, 
there is a year's error in the prognostication, and so in pro- 
portion for any inaccuracy more or less. Sir Christopher 
Heydon, the last great champion of this occult science, 
boasted of possessing a watch so exact in its movements, 
that it would give him with unerring precision not the minute 
only, but the very scruple of time. That erudite professor 
knew — 

In quas Fortunae leges quaeque hora valeret ; 
Quantaque quam parvi facerent discrimina m: tus.* 

Peter Hopkins could have explained to a student in this 
art, how its astronomical part might be performed upon the 
celestial globe " with speed, ease, delight, and demonstra- 
tion." He could have expatiated upon conjunctions and op- 
positions ; have descanted upon the four cardinal houses ; 
signs fixed, movable, or common ; signs human and signs 
bestial; semi-sextiles, sextiles, quintiles, quartiles, tredi- 
ciles, trines, biquintiies, and quincunxes ; the ascension of 
the planets, and their declination ; their dignities essential 

* Manilius. 
16 



126 THE DOCTOR. 

and accidental ; their exaltation and retrogradation ; till the 
hearer by understanding a little of the baseless theory, here 
and there, could have persuaded himself that he compre- 
hended all the rest. And if it had been necessary to exact 
implicit and profound belief, by mysterious and horrisonant 
terms, he could have amazed the listener with the lords of 
decanats, the five fortitudes, and the head and tail of the 
dragon ; and have astounded him by ringing changes upon AI- 
mugea, Cazimi, Hylech, Aphetes, Anacretes, and Alcochodon. 

" So far," says Fabian Withers, " are they distant from 
the true knowledge of physic which are ignorant of astrol- 
ogy, that they ought not rightly to be called physicians, but 
deceivers : for it hath been many times experimented and 
proved, that that which many physicians could not cure or 
remedy with their greatest and strongest medicines, the 
astronomer hath brought to pass with one simple herb, by 
observing the moving of the signs. There be certain evil 
times and years of a man's life, which are at every seven years' 
end. Wherefore if thou wilt prolong thy days, as often as 
thou comest to every seventh or ninth year, (if thou givest 
any credit to Marsilius Ficinus, or Firmicus,) diligently con- 
sult with an astronomer, from whence and by what means 
any peril or danger may happen, or come unto thee; then 
either go unto a physician, or use discretion and temper- 
ance, and by that means thou mayst defer and prolong thy 
natural life through the rules of astronomy, and the help of 
the physician. Neither be ashamed to inquire of the phy- 
sician what is thy natural diet, and of the astronomer what 
star doth most support and favour thy life, and to see in 
what aspect he is with the moon." 

That once eminent student in the mathematics and the 
celestial sciences, Henry Coley, who, as Merlin junior con- 
tinued Lilly's Almanac, and published also his own yearly 
JVuncius Sydereus, or Starry Messenger — the said Coley, 
whose portrait in a flowing wig and embroidered band, most 
unlike to Merlin, has made his Ephemeris in request among 
the Graingerites — he tells us it is from considering the na- 
ture of the planets, together with their daily configurations, 
and the mixture of their rays or beams of light and heat, 
that astrologers deduce their judgment of what mayjt)ro6a- 
hly, not positively happen : for nature, he observes, works 
very abstrusely ; and one person may be able to make a 
better discovery than another, whence arise diversities of 
opinion too often about the same thing. The physician 
knows that the same portion of either single or compound 
simples will not work upon all patients alike ; so neither can 
the like portion and power of qualities stir up, or work 
always the same ; but may sometimes receive either inten- 
tion or remissioin according to the disposed aptness of the 
subject, the elements or elementary bodies not always ad- 



THE DOCTOR. 127 

mitting- of their powers alike, or when they be overswayed 
by more potent and prevalent operations. For universal 
and particular causes do many times differ so as the one hin- 
ders the operation of the other; and nature may sometimes 
be so abstrusely shut up, that what we see not may over- 
power and work beyond what we see." 

Thus were these professors of a pseudo-science always 
provided with an excuse, however grossly their predictions 
might be contradicted by the event. It is a beautiful speci- 
men of the ambiguity of the art that the same aspect threat- 
ened a humpback, or the loss of an eye ; and that the same 
horoscope which prognosticated a crown and sceptre, was 
held to be equally accomphshed if the child were born to a 
fool's cap, a bauble, and a suit of motley. " The right wor- 
shipful, and of singular learning in all sciences, Sir Thomas 
Smith, the flower in his time of the University of Cam- 
bridge," and to whom, more than to any other individual, 
both universities are beholden ; for when parliament, in its 
blind zeal for ultra-reformation, had placed the colleges, as 
well as the religious houses, at the king's disposal, he, 
through Queen Catharine Par, prevailed upon Henry to pre- 
serve them, instead of dividing them also among the great 
court cormorants ; and he it was who reserved for them the 
third part of their rents in corn, making that a law which 
had always been his practice when he was Provost of Eton : 
this Sir Thomas used, as his grateful pupil Richard Eden 
has recorded, to call astrology ingeniosissimam artem menti' 
endi — the most ingenious art of lying. 

Ben Jonson's servant and pupil* has given some good 
comic examples of the way in which those who honestly 
endeavoured to read the stars might be deceived — though 
when the stars condescended " to palter in a double sense" 
it was seldom in so good a humour. 

" One told a gentleman 
His son should be a mankiller, and be hang'd for't ; 
Who after proved a great and rich physician, 
And with great fame, in the university 
Hang'd up in picture for a grave example !" 

" Another schemist 
Found that a squint-eyed boy should prove a notable 
Pickpurse, and afterward a most strong thief; 
When he grew up to be a cunning lawyer, 
And at last died a judge !" 

* Broome. 



128 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER LXXXVII. P. I. 



ASTROLOGY ALMANACS — PRISCILLIANISM RETAINED IN THEM TO 

THIS TIME. 

I wander 'tween the poles 
And heavenly hinges, 'mong eccentricals, 
Centres, concentrics, circles, and epicycles. 

Albumazar. 

The connection between astrology and the art of medicine 
is not more firmly believed in Persia at this day, than it was 
among the English people during the age of almanac-ma- 
kers. The column which contained the names of the saints 
for every day, as fully as they are still given in Roman Cath- 
olic almanacs, was less frequently consulted than those in 
which the aspects were set down, and the signs and the 
parts of the human body under their respective governance. 
Nor was any page in the book regarded with more implicit 
belief than that which represented the " anatomy of man's 
body as the parts thereof are governed by the twelve con- 
stellations, or rather by the moon as she passeth by them." 
In those representations, man, indeed, was not more uglily 
than fearfully made — as he stood erect and naked, spiculated 
by emitted influences from the said signs, like another St. Se- 
bastian ; or as he sat upon the globe, placed like a butt foi 
him, while they radiated their shafts of disease and pain. 

Portentous as the homo in the almanac is, he made a 
much more horrific appearance in the Margarita Philosophica, 
which is a cyclopedia of the early part of the 16th century. 
There homo stands, naked but not ashamed, upon the two 
Pisces, one foot upon each, the fish being neither in air, nor 
water, nor upon earth, but self-suspended as it appears in the 
void. Aries has alighted with two feet on homo's head, and 
has sent a shaft through the forehead into his brain. Taurus 
has quietly seated himself across his neck. The Gemini are 
riding astride a little below his right shoulder. The whole 
trunk is laid open, as if part of the old accursed punishment 
for high treason had been performed upon him. The Lion 
occupies the thorax as his proper domain, and the Crab is in 
possession of the abdomen. Sagittarius, volant in the void, 
has just let fly an arrow, which is on the way to his right 
arm. Capricornus breathes out a visible influence that pen- 
etrates both knees ; Aquarius inflicts similar punctures upon 
both legs. Virgo fishes as it were at his intestines ; Libra at 



THE DOCTOR. 129 

the part affected by schoolmasters in their anger ; and Scor- 
pio takes the wickedest aim of all. 

The progress of useful knowledge has in our own days at 
last banished this man from tlie almanac ; at least from all 
annuals of that description that carry with them any appear- 
ance of respectability. If it has put an end to this gross su- 
perstition, it has done more than the pope could do fourteen 
centuries ago, when he condemned it, as one of the perni- 
cious errors of the Priscillianists. 

In a letter to Turribius, bishop of Astorga, concerning that 
heresy, Popo St. Leo the Great says : " Si universae haereses, 
quae ante Priscilliani tempus exortae sunt, diligentius retrac- 
tentur, nuUus pene invenitur error de quo non traxerit impie- 
tas ista contagium : quae non contenta eorum recipere falsi- 
tates, qui ab Evangelio Christi sub Christi nomine deviarunt, 
tenebris se etiam paganitatis immersit, ut per magicarum ar- 
tium prophana secreta, et mathematicorum vana mendacia, 
religionis fidem, morumque rationem in potestate daemonum, 
et in affectu syderum collocarent. Quod si et credi liceat et 
doceri, nee virtutibus praemium, nee vitiis poena debebitur, 
omniaque non solum humanarum legum, sed etiam divina- 
rum constitutionum decreta solventur : quia neque de bonis, 
neque de malis actibus uUum poterit esse judicium, si in 
utramque partem fatalis necessitas motum mentis impellit, et 
quicquid ab hominibus agitur, non est hominum, sed astro- 
rum. Ad hanc insaniam pertinet prodigiosa ilia totius hu- 
mani corporis per duodecim coeli signa distinctio, ut diversis 
partibus diversae praesideant potestates ; et creatura, quam 
Deus ad imaginem suam fecit, in tanta sit obligatione syde- 
rum, in quanta est connectione membrorum." 

But invention has been as rare among heretics as among 
poets. The architect of the Priscillian heresy (the male 
heresy of that name, for there was a female one also) bor- 
rowed this superstition from the mathematicians — as the Ro- 
mans called the astrological impostors of those times. For 
this there is the direct testimony of Saint Augustine : " As- 
truunt etiam fatalibus stellis homines colligatos, ipsumque 
corpus nostrum secundum duodecim signa cceli esse compo- 
situm ; sicut hi qui mathematici vulgo appellantur, constitu- 
entes in capite Arietem, Taurum in cervice, Geminos in hu- 
meris, Cancrum in pectore, et cetera nominatim signa per- 
currentes ad plantas usque perveniunt, quas Piscibus tribuunt, 
quod ultimum signum ab astrologis nuncupatur." 

These impostors derived this part of their craft from 
Egypt, where every month was supposed to be under the 
care of the three decans or directors, for the import of the 
word must be found in the neighbouring language of the He- 
brews and Syrians. There were thirty-six of these, each su- 
perintending ten days ; and these decans were believed to ex- 
ercise the most extensive influence over the human frame. 



130 THE DOCTOR. 

Astrological squares calculated upon this mythology are 
still in existence. St. Jerome called it the opprobrium of 
Egypt. 

The medical superstition derived from this remote anti- 
quity has continued down to the present generation in the 
English almanacs, is still continued in the popular almanacs 
of other countries, and prevails at this time throughout the 
whole Mohammedan and Eastern world. So deeply does 
error strike its roots, and so widely scatter its seeds ; and so 
difficult is it to extirpate any error whatsoever, or any evil, 
which it is the interest of any class of men to maintain. And 
the rogues had much to say for themselves. 

" Notwithstanding the abuses put upon the art of astrol- 
ogy," said an eminent professor, " doubtless some judgment 
may be made thereby what any native may be by nature 
prone or addicted to. For the aspects of the planets among 
themselves, as also the fixed stars, 'tis more than supposed, 
may cause many strange effects in sublunary bodies, but es- 
pecially in those that have been almost worn out with decrepit 
age, or debilitated with violent or tedious diseases ; where- 
fore this knowledge may be requisite, and of excellent use 
to physicians and chirurgeons, &c. ; for old aches and most 
diseases do vary according to the change of the air and 
weather, and that proceeds from the motion of the heavens 
and aspects of the planets." Who that has any old aches in 
his bones — or has felt his corns shoot — but must acknow- 
ledge the truth that was brought forward here in support of 
an impudent system of imposture ? The natural pride, and 
the natural piety of man, were both appealed to when he 
was told that the stars were appointed for signs and tokens — 
that " the reason why God hath given him an upright coun- 
tenance is, that he might converse with the celestial bodies, 
which are placed for his service as so many diamonds in an 
azure canopy of perpetuity" — and that astrologers had a 
large field to walk in, for " all the productions of time were 
the subjects of their science, and there is nothing under the 
sun but what is the birth of time." There is no truth, how- 
ever pure, and however sacred, upon which falsehood can- 
not fasten, and ingraft itself therein. 

Laurence Humphrey — who was sufficiently known in Queen 
Elizabeth's days as one of the standard bearers of the non- 
conformists, but who, like many others, grew conformable in 
the end as he grew riper in experience and sager in judgment 
— in his Optimates or Treatise concerning Nobility, which 
he composed for the use of that class and of the gentry, ob- 
served how " this science above all others was so snatched 
at, so beloved, and even devoured by most persons of hon- 
our and worship, that they needed no excitement to it, but 
rather a bridle ; no trumpeter to set them on, but a reprover 
to take them off from their heat. Many," he said, " had so 



THE DOCTOR. 131 

trusted to it that tliey almost distrusted God." He would 
not indeed wholly condemn the art, but the nobility should 
not have him a persuader nor an applauder of it ; for there 
were already enough! In vain might a bishop warn his 
hearers from the pulpit and from the press that " no sooth- 
sayer, no palterer, no judicial astrologer is able to tell any 
man the events of his life." Man is a dupable animal. 
Quacks in medicine, quacks in religion, and quacks in politics 
know this, and act upon that knowledge. There is scarcely 
any one who may not, like a trout, be taken by tickling. 



CHAPTER LXXXVIII. P. I. 

AN INCIDENT WHICH BRINGS THE AUTHOR INTO A FORTUITOUS 
RESEMBLLANCE WITH THE PATRIARCH OF THE PREDICANT FRI- 
ARS DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE FACT AND THE FABLE ; AND 

AN APPLICATION WHICH, UNLIKE THOSE THAT ARE USUALLY 
APPENDED TO ESOP's FABLES, THE READER IS LIKELY NEITHER 
TO SKIP NOR TO FORGET. 

Dire aqui una maldad grande del Demonic. 

Pedro de Cieca de Leon. 

While I was writing that last chapter a flea appeared upon 
the page before me, as there did once to St. Dominic. 

But the circumstances in my case and in St. Dominic's 
were different. 

For, in the first place, I, as has already been said, was 
writing ; but St. Dominic was reading. 

Secondly, the flea which came upon my paper was a real 
flea — a flea of flea flesh and blood — partly flea blood and 
partly mine, which the said flea had flea-feloniously appro- 
priated to himself by his own process of flea-botomy. That 
which appeared upon St. Dominic's book was the devil in 
disguise. 

The intention with which the devil abridged himself into 
so diminutive a form was that he might distract the saint's 
attention from his theological studies by skipping upon the 
page, and perhaps provoke him to unsaintlike impatience by 
eluding his fingers. 

But St. Dominic was not so to be deceived; he knew who 
the false flea was ! 

To punish him, therefore, for this diabolical intrusion, he 
laid upon him a holy spell, whereby flea Beelzebub was made 
to serve as a marker through the whole book. When Dom- 
inic, whether in the middle of a sentence or at the end, lifted 



132 THE DOCTOR. 

his eyes from the page in meditation, flea Beelzebub moved 
to the word at which the saint had paused ; he moved not 
by his own diabohcal will, but in obedience to an impulse 
which he had no power to resist ; and there he remained, 
having- as little power to remove, till the saint's eye, having 
returned to the book and travelled farther, stopped at another 
passage. And thus St. Dominic used him through the vol- 
ume, putting him, moreover, whenever he closed- the book, 
to the peinejorte et dure. 

When Dominic had finished the volume, he dismissed his 
marker. Had it been a heretic, instead of the devil, the can- 
onized founder of the friars predicant and patron saint of the 
inquisition would not have let him off so easily. 

Indeed I cannot but think that his lenity in this case was 
ill placed. He should have dealt with that flea as I did with 
mine. 

" How, Mr. Author, was that ?" 

" I dealt with it, sir, as Agesilaus unceremoniously did 
with one victim upon the altar of Chalcioecius Pallas, at the 
same time that, with all due ceremony, he was sacrificing 
another. An ox was the premeditated and customary victim ; 
the extemporaneous and extraordinary one was a six-footed 
' small deer.' Plutarch thought the fact worthy of being re- 
corded ; and we may infer from it that the Spartans did not 
always comb their long hair so carefully as the three hun- 
dred did at Thermopylae, when, on the morning of that ever 
glorious fight, they made themselves ready to die there, in 
obedience to the institutions of their country. What the 
King of Lacedaemon did with his crawler I did with my skip- 
per; I cracked it, sir." 

" And for what imaginable reason can you have thought 
fit to publish such an incident to the world V 

" For what reason, sir ? — why, that Hop-o'-my-thumb the 
critic may know what he has to expect, if I lay hold of 
him!" 



THE DOCTOR. 133 



CHAPTER LXXXIX. P. I. 

k CHAPTER CHARACTERISTIC OF FRENCH ANTIQUARIES, FRENCH 
LADIES, FRENCH LAWYERS, FRENCH JUDGES, FRENCH LITERA- 
TURE, AND FRENCHNESS IN GENERAL. 

Quid de pulicibus? vitae salientia puncta.— Cowley. 

Now, reader, having sent away the small critic with a flea 
in his ear, 1 will tell you something concerning one of the 
curiosities of literature. 

The most famous flea, for a real flea, that has yet been heard 
of — for not even the king of the fleas, who, as Dr. Clarke 
and his fellow-traveller found to their cost, keeps his court at 
Tiberias, approaches it in celebrity — nor the flea of that 
song, which Mephistophiles sung in the cellar at Leipzig — 
that flea for whom the king ordered breeches and hose from 
his own tailor ; who was made prime minister ; and who, 
when he governed the realm, distinguished himself like 
Earl Grey, by providing for all his relations : the most illus- 
trious, I say, of all fleas — pulicum facile princeps — was that 
flea which I know not whether to call Mademoiselle des 
Roches'sflea, or Pasquier's flea, or the flea of Poictiers. 

In the year 1579, when the grands jours, or great assizes, 
were held at Poictiers under President de Harlay, Pasquier, 
who was one of the most celebrated advocates, most ac- 
complished scholars and most learned men in France, at- 
tended in the exercise of his profession. Calling there one 
day upon Madame des Roches and her daughter, Mademoi- 
selle Catharine, whom he describes as Vune de plus belles et 
sages de nostre France, while he was conversing with the 
young lady he espied a flea, parqute au beau milieu de son 
sein. 

Upon this Pasquier made such a speech as a Frenchman 
might be expected to make upon so felicitous an occasion, 
admiring the taste of the flea, envying its happiness, and 
marvelling at its boldness " de s'estre mice en si beau jour ; 
parce que jaloux de son heur, peu s'en falloit," he says, " que 
je ne misse la main sur elle, en deliberation de luy faire un 
mauvais tour ; et bien luy prenoit qu'elle estoit en heu de 
franchise !" This led to a c&ntention mignarde between the 
young lady and the learned lawyer, who was then more 
than fifty years of age ; " finalement, ayant este I'autheur de 
la noise," says Pasquier, "je luy dis que puisque ceste Puce 
avoit receu tant d'heur de se repaistre de son sang, et d'estre 
16* 



134 THE DOCTOR. 

reciproquement honoree de nos propos, elle meritoit encores 
d'estre enchassee dedans nos papiers, et que tresvolontiers 
je m'y employerois, si cette dame vouloit de sa part faire le 
semblable; chose qu'elle m'accorda iiberalement." Each 
was in earnest, but each, according to the old advocate, sup- 
posed the other to be in jest ; both went to work upon this 
theme after the visit, and each finished a copy of verses 
about the same time, " tombants en quelques rencontres de 
mots les plus signalez pour le subject." Pasquier thniking 
to surprise the lady, sent his poem to her as soon as he had 
transcribed it, on a Sunday morning — the better the day the 
better being the deed : and the lady apprehending that they 
might have fallen upon some of the same thoughts, lest she 
should be suspected of borrowing what she knew to be her 
own, sent back the first draught of her verses by his mes- 
ger, not having had time to write them fairly out. " Heureuse, 
certes, rencontre et jouyssance de deux esprits, qui passe 
d'un long entrejet, toutes ces opinions foUastres et vulgaires 
d'amour. Que si en cecy tu me permets d'y apporter quelque 
chose de mon jugement je te diray, qu'en I'un tu trouveras 
les discours d'une sage fiUe, en I'autre les discours d'un 
homme qui n'est pas trop fol ; ayants I'un et I'autre par une 
bienseance des nos sexes joiie tels roolles que devious." 

The demoiselle, after describing in her poem the feats of 
the flea, takes a hint from the resemblance in sound between 
puce amd pucelle, and making an allegorical use of mythology, 
makes by that means a decorous allusion to the vulgar notion 
concerning the unclean circumstances by which fleas, as 
they say, are bred : — 

" Puce, si ma plume estoit digne, 
Je descrirois vostre origine ; 
Et comment le plus grand des dieux, 
Pour la terre quittant les cieux, 
Vous iit naitre, corame il me semble, 
Orion et tous tout ensemble." 

She proceeds to say that Pan became enamoured of this 
sister of Orion ; that Diana to preserve her from his pursuit 
metamorphosed her into a flea, {en puce,) and that in this 
transformation nothing remained of her 

" Sinon 
La crainte, I'adresse, et le nom." 

Pasquier in his poem gave himself a pretty free scope in 
his imaginary pursuit of the fl^, and in all the allusions to 
which its name would on such an occasion invite an old 
Frenchman. If the story had ended here, it would have 
been characteristic enough of French manners, " Or voy, je te 
prie," says Pasquier, " quel fruict nous a produit cette belle 



THE DOCTOR. 135 

altercation, ou pour mieux dire, symbolization de deux ames. 
Ces deux petits jeux poetiques cojp:iniencerent a courir par 
les mains de plusieurs, et se trouverent si agreables, que sur 
leur modelle, quelques personnages de marque voulurent 
estre de la partie ; et s'employerent sur mesme subject a qui 
mieux mieux, les uns en Latin, les autres en Francois, et 
quelquesuns en I'une et I'autre langue : ayant chacun si 
bien exploite en son endroict, qu' a chacun doit demeurer la 
victoire." 

Among the distinguished persons who exercised their 
talents upon this worthy occasion, Brisson was one ; that 
Brisson of whom Henri III. said that no king but himself 
could boast of so learned a subject; who lent the assistance 
of his great name and talents towards setting up the most 
lawless of all tyrannies, that of an insurrectionary govern- 
ment ; and who suffered death under that tyranny, as the 
reward which such men always (and righteously as concerns 
themselves, however iniquitous the sentence) receive from 
the miscreants with whom they have leagued. He began 
his poem much as a scholar might be expected to do, by al- 
luding to the well-known pieces which had been composed 
upon somewhat similar subjects. 

"Foelices merito Mures Ranaeque loquaces 

Quels caeci vatis contigit ore cani : 
Vivet et extento lepidus Passerculus sevo 

Cantatus numeris, culte Catulle tuis. 
Te quoque, parve Culex, nulla unquam muta silebit 

Posteritas, docti suave Maronis opus. 
Ausoniusque Pules, dubius quem condidit auctor, 

Canescet saeciis innumerabilibus. 
Pictonici at Pulicis longe praeciarior est sors, 

Quem fovet in tepido casta puella sinu. 
Fortunate Pul6x nimium, tua si bona noris, 

Alternis vatum nobilitate metris." 

In the remainder of his poem Brisson takes the kind of 
range which, if the subject did not actually invite, it seemed 
at least to permit. He produced also four Latin epigrams 
against such persons as might censure him for such a pro- 
duction, and these, as well as the poem itself, were translated 
into French by Pasquier. This was necessary for the public, 
not for Madame des Roches and her daughter, who were 
versed both in Latin and Greek. Among the numerous per- 
sons whom the assizes had brought to Poictiers, whether as 
judges, advocates, suitors, or idlers, every one who could 
write a Latin or a French verse tried his skill upon this small 
subject. " Tout le Parnasse Latin et Fran9ois du royaume," 
says Titon du Tillet, " voulut prendre part a cette rare de- 
couverte, sur tout apres avoir reconnu que la fille, quoique 
tressage, entendoit raillerie." There is one Italian sonnet 
in the collection, one Spanish, and, according to the Abbe 



136 THE DOCTOR. 

Goujet, there are some Greek verses, but in the republication 
of Pasquier's works these do not appear: they were proba- 
bly omitted, as not beiffg- likely ever again to meet with 
readers. Some of the writers were men whose names would 
have been altogether forgotten if they had not been thus 
preserved ; and others might as well have been forgotten for 
the value of anything which they have left ; but some were 
deservedly distinguished in their generation, and had won 
for themselves an honourable remembrance, which will not 
pass away. The President Harlay himself encouraged Pas- 
quier by a eulogistic epigram, and no less a person than 
Joseph Scaliger figures in CatuUian verse among the flea 
poets. 

The name of the Demoiselle des Roches afforded occasion 
for such allusions to the rocks of Parnassus as the dealers 
in commonplace poetry could not fail to profit by. 

" Nil rerum variat perennis ordo. 
Et constant sibi Phoebus et sorores ; 
Nee Pulex modo tot simul Poetas, 
Sed Parnassia fecit ipsa rupes 
Rupes, aut Heliconia Hippocrene." 

These verses were written by Pithou, to whose satirical 
talents his own age was greatly indebted for the part which 
he took in the Satyre Menippee ; and to whose collections 
and serious researches his country will always remain so. 
Many others harped upon the same string; and Claude Binet, 
in one of his poems, compared the lady to Rochelle, because 
all suitors had found her impregnable. 

Nicolas Rapin, by way of varying the subject, wrote a 
poem in vituperation of the aforesaid flea, and called it La 
Contrepuce. He would rather, he said, write in praise of a 
less mentionable insect; which, however, he did mention; 
and moreover broadly explained, and in the coarsest terms, 
the lady's allusion to Orion. 

The flea having thus become the business, as well as the 
talk of Poictiers, some epigrams were sported upon the 
occasion. 

" Causidicos habuit vigilantes Curia ; namque 
lUis perpetuus tinnit in aure Pulex." 

The name of Nicolas Rapinus is affixed to this ; that of Ra- 
phael Gallodonius to the following : — 

" Ad consultissimos Supremi Senatus Gallaci Patronos, in 
Rupese Puhcem ludentes." 

" Abdita causarum si vis responsa referre, 
Hos tarn perspicuos consule Causidicos; 
Oni inris rallftnt. anir.es. vestigia mnrsn 



AJUJO tail! pc;iojJiv.'U^_fo i^i.fiioL*i^^ v^auoiuiv 

Qui juris callent apices, vestigia morsu 



THE DOCTOR. 137 

Metiri pulicum carmine certa sciunt. 
Ecquid eos latuisse putas dum seria tractant, 
Qui dum nugantur, tarn bene parva canunt:" 

The pi Bsident of the parhament of Paris, Pierre de Soul- 
four, compared the flea to the Trojan horse, and introduced 
this gigantic compliment with a stroke of satire. 

" Quid Magni peperere Dies ? res mira canenda est, 

Vera tamen ; Pulicem progenuere brevem. 
Quicquid id est, tamen est magnum ; Magnisque Diebus 

Non sine divino numine progenitum. 
Ille utero potuit plures gestare poetas, 

Quam tulit audaces techna Pelasga duces. 
Tros equus heroes tantos non fudit ab alvo, 

Dulcisonos vates quot tulit iste Pulex." 



^ 



Pasquier was proud of what he had done in starting the 
flea, and of the numerous and distinguished persons who had 
been pleased to follow his example in poetizing upon it. 
" Pour memorial de laquelle," he says, " jai voulu dresser ce 
trophee, qui est la publication de leurs vers." So he collected 
all these verses in a small quarto volume, and published them 
in 1582, with this title. " La Puce ; ou JeuxPoetiques Fran- 
cois et Latins : composez sur la Puce aux Grands Jours de 
Poictiers I'an 1579 : dont Pasquier fut le premier motif." 
He dedicated the volume to the President Harlay, in the fol- 
lowing sonnet :-— 

" Pendant que du Harley de Themis la lumiere, 
Pour bannir de Poictou I'espouventable mal, 
Exertjant la justice a tous de poids egal, 

Restablessoit I'Astree en sa chaire premiere ; 

Quelques nobles esprits, pour se donner carriers, 
Voulourent exalter un petit animal, 
Et luy coler aux flancs les aisles du cheval 

Qui prend jusque au ciel sa course coutumiere. 

Harlay, mon Achille, relasche tes esprits ; 

Sousguigne d'un bon ceil tant soit peu ces escrits, 
11 attendent de toy, ou la mort, ou la vie : 

Si tu pers a les lier un seul point de ton temps, 

lis vivront immortels dans le temple des ans, 
Malgre roubly, la mort, le mesdire et I'envie." 



The original volume would have passed away with the 
generation to which it belonged, or if preserved, it would, 
like many others more worthy of preservation, have been 
found only in the cabinets of those who value books for their 
rarity rather than their intrinsic worth : this would have been 
its fate if it had not been comprised in the collective edition ol 
Pasquier's works, which, as relating to his own times, to the 
antiquities of his country, and to French literature, are of 
the greatest importance. It was properly included there, 
not merely because it is characteristic of the nation, and of 



138 THE DOCTOR. 

the age, but because it belongs to the history of the indi- 
vidual. 

Here in England the circuit always serves to sharpen the 
wits of those who are waiting, some of them hungrily, and 
but too many hopelessly, for practice ; and as nowhere 
there is more talent running to seed than at the bar, epi- 
grams circulate there as freely as opinions — and much more 
harmlessly. But that the elders of the profession, and the 
judges, should take part in such levities as the Jeux Poeliques 
of Poictiers, would at all times have been as much out of 
character in England, as it would be still in character among 
our lighter-heeled, lighter-hearted, and lighter-headed neigh- 
bours. The same facility in composing Latin verse would 
not now be found at the French bar ; but if a flea were 
started there, a full cry might as easily be raised after it, as 
it was at the grands jours held under the President Harlay ; 
and they who joined hi the cry would take exactly the same 
tone. You would find in their poetry just as much of what 
Pasquier calls mignardise^ and just as little exertion of intel- 
lect in any other direction. 

It is not language alone, all but all-powerful in this re- 
spect as language is, which makes the difference in whatever 
belongs to poetry, between the French and the English. We 
know how Donne has treated this very subject; and we 
know how Cleveland, and Randolph, and Cowley would have 
treated it, licentiously indeed, but with such a profusion of 
fantastic thought, that a prodigahty of talent would seem 
even greater than the abuse. In later times, if such a theme 
had presented itself, Darwin would have put the flea in a 
solar microscope, and painted the monster with surprising 
accuracy in the most elaborate rhymes : he would then have 
told of fleas which had been taken and tamed, and bound in 
chains, or yoked to carriages ; and this he would have done 
in couplets so nicely turned, and so highly polished, that the 
poetical artist might seem to vie with the flea-tamer and 
carriage-builder in patience and in minute skill. Cowper 
would have passed, with playful but melancholy grace, 

" From gay to grave, from lively to severe," 

and might have produced a second task. And in our own 
days, Rogers would case the flea, like his own gnat, in im- 
perishable amber. Leigh Hunt would luxuriate in a fairy 
poem, fanciful as Drayton's Nymphidia, or in the best style 
of Herrick. Charles Lamb would crack a joke upon the 
subject ; but then he would lead his readers to think while 
he was amusing them, make them feel, if they were capable 
of feeling, and perhaps leave them in tears. Southey would 
give us a strain of scornful satire and meditative playfulness 
in blank verse of the Elizabethan standard. Wordsworth— 



THE DOCTOR. 139 

no, Wordsworth would disdain the flea : but some imitator 
of Wordsworth would enshrine the flea in a sonnet the 
thought and diction of which would be as proportionate to 
the subject matter, as the Great Pyramid is to the nameless 
one of the Pharaohs for whose tomb it was constructed. 
Oxford and Cambridge would produce Latin verses, good in 
their manner as the best of Pasquier's collection, and better 
in everything else ; they would give us Greek verses also, 
as many and as good. Landor would prove himself as re- 
condite a Latinist as Scaliger, and a better poet ; but his 
heiidecasyllables would not be so easily construed. Cruik- 
shank would illustrate the whole collection with immortal 
designs, such as no other country, and no other man could 
produce. The flea would be introduced upon the stage in 
the next new pantomime ; Mr. Irving would discover it in 
the Apocalypse ; and some preacher of Rowland Hill's 
school would improve it (as the phrase is) in a sermon, and 
exhort his congregation iojiee from sin. 

I say nothing of Mr. Moore, and the half dozen lords who 
would mignardise the subject like so many Frenchmen. But 
how would Bernard Barton treat it ? Perhaps Friend Bar- 
ton will let us see in one of the next year's annuals. 

I must not leave the reader with an unfavourable opinion 
of the lady whose flea obtained such singular celebrity, 
and who quoique tres sage entendoit raillerie. Titon du 
Tillet intended nothing equivocal by that expression ; and 
the tone which the flea poets took was in no degree derog- 
atory to her, for the manners of the age permitted it. Les 
Dames des Roches, both mother and daughter, were remark- 
able and exemplary women ; and there was a time when 
Poictiers derived as much glory from these blue ladies as 
from the Black Prince. The mother, after living most hap- 
pily with her husband eight-and-twenty years, suffered 
greatly in her widowhood from vexatious lawsuits, difficult 
circumstances, and broken health; but she had great re- 
sources in herself, and in the dutiful attachment of Cath- 
arine, who was her only child, and whom she herself had 
nursed and educated ; the society of that daughter enabled 
her to bear her afflictions, not only with patience, but with 
cheerfulness. No solicitations could induce Catharine to 
marry ; she refused off"ers which might in all other respects 
have been deemed eligible, because she would not be sep- 
arated from her mother, from whom she said death itself 
could not divide her. And this was literally verified, for in 
1587 they both died of the plague on the same day 

Both were women of great talents and great attainments. 
Their joint works, in prose and verse, were published in their 
lifetime, and have been several times reprinted, but not 
since the year 1604. The poetry is said to be of little 
value ; but the philosophical dialogues are praised as being 



140 THE DOCTOR. 

neither deficient in genius nor in solidity, and as composi- 
tions which may still be perused with pleasure and advan- 
tage. This is the opinion of a benevolent and competent 
critic, the Abbe Goujet. 1 have never seen the book. 

Before I skip back to the point from which my own flea 
and the Poictiers flea have led me, I must tell a story of an 
English lady who under a similar circumstance was not so 
fortunate as Pasquier's accomplished friend. This lady, who 
lived in the country, and was about to have a large dinner 
party, was ambitious of making as great a display as her 
husband's establishment, a tolerably large one, could furnish; 
so that there might seem to be no lack of servants, a great 
lad who had been employed only in farmwork was trimmed 
and dressed for the occasion, and ordered to take his stand 
behind his mistress's chair, with strict injunctions not to 
stir from the place, or do anything unless she directed him ; 
the lady well knowing that although no footman could make a 
better appearance as a piece of still life, some awkwardness 
would be inevitable, if he were put in motion. Accordingly, 
Thomas, having thus been duly drilled and repeatedly en- 
joined, took his post at the head of- the table behind his 
mistress, and for a while he found suflEicient amusement in 
looking at the grand setout, and staring at the guests : when 
he was weary of this, and of an inaction to which he was so 
little used, his eyes began to pry about nearer objects. It 
was at a time when our ladies followed the French fashion 
of having the back and shoulders under the name of the neck 
uncovered much lower than accords either with the English 
chmate, or with old English notions ; a time when, as Landor 
expresses it, the usurped dominion of neck had extended 
from the ear downward almost to where mermaids be- 
come fish. This lady was in the height, or lowness of that 
fashion ; and between her shoulder-blades, in the hollow 
of the back, not far from the confines where nakedness and 
clothing met, Thomas espied what Pasquier had seen upon 
the neck of Mademoiselle des Roches. The guests were 
too much engaged with the business and the courtesies of the 
table to see what must have been worth seeing — the trans- 
figuration produced in Thomas's countenance by delight, 
when he saw so fine an opportunity of showing himself at- 
tentive, and making himself useful. The lady was too much 
occupied with her company to feel the flea ; but to her 
horror she felt the great finger and thumb of Thomas upon 
her back, and to her greater horror heard him exclaim in 
exultation, to the still greater amusement of the party, A 
vlea, a vlea ! my lady^ ecod Vve caucht 'en / 



THE DOCTOR. 141 



CHAPTER XC. P. 1. 

WHEREIN THE CURIOUS READER MAY FIND SOME THINGS WHICH 
HE IS NOT LOOKING FOR, AND WHICH THE INCURIOUS ONE 
MAY SKIP IF HE PLEASES. 

Voulant doncques satisfaire a la curiosite de touts bons compagnons, j'ay 
revolve toutes les Pantarches des Cieux, calcule les quadrats de la Lune, 
crochete toutce que jamais penserent touts les Astrophiles, Hypernephe- 
listes, Anemophylaces, Uranopetes, et Omprophozes. — Rabelais. 

A minute's recollection will carry the reader back to the 
chapter whereon that accidental immolation took place, 
which was the means of introducing' him to the bas-bleus of 
Poictiers. We were then engaged upon the connection 
which in Peter Hopkin's time still subsisted between as- 
trology and the practice of medicine. 

Court de Gebelin in his great hypothetical, fanciful, but 
withal ingenious, erudite, and instructive work, says that the 
almanac was one of the most illustrious and most useful 
efforts of genius of the first men, and that a complete history 
of it would be a precious canvass for the history of the 
human race, were it not that unfortunately many of the 
necessary materials have perished. " On peut assurer," he 
says, "que sans almanach, les operations de I'agriculture 
seroient incertaines ; que les trevaux des champs ne se ren- 
contreroient que per hazard dans les tems convenables : 
qui il n'y auroit ni f6tes ni assemblees publiques, et que la 
memoire des tems anciens ne seroit qu'un cahos." 

This is saying a little too much. But who is there that 
has not sometimes occasion to consult the almanac ] 
Maximilian I., by neglecting to do this, failed in an enterprise 
against Bruges. It had been concerted with his adherents 
in that turbulent city, that he should appear before it at a 
certain time, and they would be ready to rise in his behalf, 
and open the gates for him. He forgot that it was leap 
year, and came a day too soon ; and this error on his pari 
cost many of the most zealous of his friends their lives. It is 
remarkable that neither the historian who relates this, nor 
the writers who have followed him, should have looked in 
the almanac to guard against any inaccuracy in the rela- 
tion ; for they have fixed the appointed day on the eve of St. 
Matthias, which being the 23d of February, could not be put 
out of its course by leap year. 

This brings to my recollection a legal anecdote, that may 
serve in like manner to exemplify how necessary it is upon 



142 THE DOCTOR. 

any important occasion to scrutinize the accuracy of a 
statement before it is taken upon trust. A fellow was tried 
(at the Old Bailey if I remember rightly) for highway rob- 
bery, and the prosecutor swore positively to him, saying he 
had seen his face distinctly, for it was a bright moonhght 
night. The counsel for the prisoner cross-questioned the 
man, so as to make him repeat that assertion, and insist upon 
it. He then affirmed that this was a most important circum- 
stance, and a most fortunate one for the prisoner at the bar: 
because the night on which the alleged robbery was said to 
have been committed was one in which there had been no 
moon ; it was during the last quarter ! In proof of this he 
handed an almanac to the bench — and the prisoner was ac- 
quitted accordingly. The prosecutor, however, had stated 
everything truly; and it was known afterward that the 
almanac with which the counsel came provided had been pre- 
pared and printed for the occasion. 

There is a pleasing passage in Sanazzaro's Arcadia, 
wherein he describes two large beechen tablets, suspended 
in the temple of Pan, one on each side of the altar, " Scritte 
di rusticane lettere ; le quali successivamente di tempo in 
tempo per molti anni conservate dai passati pastori, contene- 
vano in se le antiche leggi, e gli ammaestramenti della pas- 
torale vita : dalle quali tutto quello che fra le selve oggi se 
adopra, ebbe prima origine." One of these tablets contained 
directions for the management of cattle. In the other, 
" Eran notati tutti i di deli' anno, e i varj mutamenti delle 
stagioni, e la inequalita delle notte e del giorno, insieme con 
la osservazione delle ore, non poco necessarie a viventi, e li 
non falsi pronostici delle tempestati : e quando il Sole con 
suo nascimento denunzia serenita, e quondo pioggia, e quando 
venti, e quando grandini; e quali giorni son della luna fortu- 
nati, e quali infehci alle opre de' mortali : e che ciascuno in 
ciascuna ora dovesse fuggire, o seguitare, per non offendere 
le osservabili volonta degli Dii." 

It is very probable that Sanazzaro has transferred to his 
pastoral what may then have been the actual usage in more 
retired parts of the country ; and that before the invention 
of printing rendered almanacs accessible to every one, a 
calendar, which served for agricultural as well as ecclesias- 
tical purposes, was kept in every considerable church. 
Olaus Magnus says that the northern countrymen used to 
have a calendar cut upon their walking sticks ; {haculos an- 
nales, he calls them ;) and that when they met at church 
from distant parts, they laid their heads together and made 
their computations. The origin of these wooden almanacs^ 
which belong to our own antiquities as well as to those of 
Scandinavia, is traced hypothetically to the heathen temple, 
authentically to the church. It has been supposed that 
the Cimbri received the Julian calendar from Caesar himself. 



THE DOCTOR. 143 

after his conquest, as it is called, of Britain ; and that it was 
cut in Runic characters, for the use of the priests, upon the 
rocks or huge stones which composed their rude temples, 
till some one thought of copying it on wood and rendering 
it portable, for common use : " Donee tandem," are Wor- 
mius's words, " ingenii rara dexteritate emersit ille, quis- 
quis tandem fuerit, qui per lignea haecce compendia, tarn 
utile tamque necessarium negotium plebi communicandum 
duxit : cujus nomen si exstaret aequiore jure fastis hisce in- 
sereretur, quam multorum tituli, quos boni publici cura vix 
unquam tetigit." 

The introduction of the Julian calender at that time is, 
however, nothing better than an antiquary's mere dream. 
At a later period the Germans, who had much more commu- 
nication with the Romans than ever the Scandinavians had, 
divided the year into three seasons, if Tacitus was rightly 
informed ; this being one consequence of the little regard 
which they paid to agriculture. " Hyems et ver aestas in- 
tellecturn ac vocabula habent ; autumni perinde nomen ac 
bona ignorantur." 

Moreover, Wormius was assured (and this was a fact 
which might well have been handed dov/n by memory, and 
was not likely to have been recorded) that the wooden alma- 
nacs were originally copied from a written one in a very 
ancient manuscript preserved in the church at Drontheim. 
There is no proof that a pagan rimstoke ever existed in those 
countries. The clergy had no interest in withholding this 
kind of knowledge from the people even in the darkest ages 
of papal tyranny and monkish imposture. But during the 
earlier idolatries of the Romans it seems to have been with- 
held ; and it was against the will of the senate that the fasti 
were first divulged to the people by Cneius Flavins Scriba. 

The carelessness of the Romans during many ages as to 
the divisions of time seems scarcely compatible even with 
the low degree of civilization which they had attained. We 
are told that when the twelve tables were formed, no other 
distinctions of the day than those of sunrise and sunset were 
known among them by name ; that some time after they be- 
gun to compute from noon to noon ; and that for three hun- 
dred years they had nothing whereby to measure an hour, 
nor knew of any such denomination, tamdiu populi Romani 
mdiscreta lux fuit. A brazen pillar, which marked the 
hour of noon by its shortest shadow, was the only means 
of measuring time, till, in the first Punic war, the consul M. 
Valerius Messala brought thither a sundial from the spoils 
of Catana in Sicily. This was in the 477th year of the city ; 
and by that dial the Romans went ninety-nine years without 
adapting it to the meridian of Rome. A better was then 
erected ; but they were still without any guide in cloudy 
weather, till in the year 595 after the building of the city, 



144 THE DOCTOR. 

Scipio Nasica introduced the water clock, which is said to 
have been invented about eighty years before by Ctesibius 
of Alexandria. When the Romans had begun to advance in 
civilization, no people ever made a more rapid progress in all 
the arts and abuses which follow in its train. Astrology came 
with astronomy from the East, for science had speedily been 
converted into a craft, and in the age of the Caesars the Egyp- 
tian professors of that craft were among the pests of Rome. 

More than one Roman calendar is in existence, preserved 
by the durability of the material, which is a square block of 
marble. Each side contains three months, in parallel col- 
umns, headed by the appropriate signs of the zodiac. In 
these the astronomical information was given, with direc- 
tion8 for the agricultural business of the month, and notices 
of the respective gods under whose tutelage the months were 
placed, and of the religious festivals in their course, with a 
warning to the husbandmen against neglecting those religious 
duties, upon the due performance of which the success of 
their labours depended. 

Those learned authors who look in the Scriptures for what 
is not to be found there, and supply by conjectures whatever 
they wish to find, have not decided whether astronomy was 
part of Adam's infused knowledge, or whether it was acquired 
by him and his son Seth ; but from Seth they say it descended 
to Abraham, and he imparted it to the Egyptians. Whatever 
may be thought of this derivation, the Egyptian mind seems 
always to have pullulated with superstition, as the slime of 
their own Nile is said to have fermented into low and loath- 
some forms of miscreated life. The rabbis say that ten 
measures of witchcraft were sent into the world, and Egypt 
got nine of them. 

The Greeks are said to have learned from the Babylonians 
the twelve divisions of the day. The arrow-headed inscrip- 
tions at Babylon are supposed by some of those who have 
bestowed most attention upon them to be calendars ; and 
there can be little doubt that where the divisions of time 
were first scientificall}'^ observed, there the first calendar 
would be formed. In Egypt, however, it is that we hear of 
them first ; and such resemblances exist between the Egyp- 
tian calendar, and the oldest of those which have been dis- 
covered in the north of Europe, that Court de Gebehn sup- 
poses they must have had a common origin, and in an age 
anterior to those Chaldeans whose astronomical observations 
ascended nineteen hundred years before the age of Alexander. 
This is too wild an assumption to be soberly maintained. 
What is common to both found its way to Scandinavia in far 
later times. Christianity was imported into those countries 
with all the corruptions which it had gathered in the East as 
well as in the West ; and the Christian calendar brought with 
it as many superstitions of European growth, as there was 



THE DOCTOR. 145 

room for inserting. There was room for many even upon 
the Norwegian staff. 

The lineal descendant of that rimstoke was still in use in 
the middle of England at the close of the seventeenth cen- 
tury; though it was then, says Plot, a sort of antiquity so 
little known that it had hardly been heard of in the southern 
parts, and was understood but by few of the gentry in the 
northern. Clogg was the English name, whether so called 
from the word log, because they were generally made of 
wood, and not so commonly of oak or fir as of box, or from 
the resemblance of the larger ones to the clogs, " wherewith 
we restrain the wild, extravagant, mischievous motions of 
some of our dogs," he knew,not. There were some few of 
brass. Some were of convenient size for the pocket ; and 
there were larger ones, which used to hang at one end of the 
mantletree of the chimney for family use ; as in Denmark 
the rimstoke was found in every respectable yeoman's house 
at the head of the table, or suspended from a beam. Plot 
minutely and carefully described these, and endeavoured, 
but not always with success, to explain some of the hiero- 
glyphes or symbols by which the festivals were denoted ; all 
which he had seen had only the Prime (or Golden Number) 
and the immovable feasts ; the Prime, so called as indicating 
primas lunas through the year, our ancestors set in the margin 
of their calendars in characters of gold — and thence its other 
name. 

The rudest that has ever been discovered was found in 
pulling down part of a chateau in Bretagne. Its characters 
had so magical an appearance, that it would have been con- 
demned by acclamation to the flames, if the lord of the cha- 
teau had not rescued it, thinking it was more likely to puzzle 
an antiquary than to raise the devil. He sent it to Sainte 
Pelaye, and M. Lancelot succeeded in fully explaining it. 
Most barbarous as it was, there is reason for concluding 
that it was not older than the middle of the seventeenth 
century. 

In Peter Hopkins's time the clogg was still found in farm- 
houses. He remembered when a countryman had walked 
to the nearest large town, thirty miles distant, for the ex- 
press purpose of seeing an almanac, the first that had been 
heard of in those parts. His inquiring neighbours crowded 
round the man on his return. " Well — well," said he, " I 
know not ! it maffles and talks. But all I could make out is 
that CoUop Monday falls on a Tuesday next year." 



146 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER XCI. P. I. 

THE AUTHOR DISPLAYS A LITTLE MORE OF SUCH READING AS IS 
SELDOM READ, AND SHOWS THAT LORD BYRON AND AN ESSEX 
WIDOW DIFFERED IN OPINION CONCERNING FRIDAY. 

Si j'avois disperse ceci en divers endroits de men ouvrage, j'aurois evite 
la censure de ceux qui appelleront ce chapitre un fatras de petit recueils. 
Mais comme je cherche la commodite de mes lecteurs plutot que la mi- 
enne, je veux bien au depens de cette censure, leur epargner la peine de 
rassembler ce que j'aurois disperse. — Bayle. 

There is no superstition, however harmless it may appear, 
and may indeed long continue to be, but has in it some latent 
evil. Much has arisen from the distinction of unlucky days, 
which may very innocently and naturally have originated, 
though it was afterward dexterously applied by astrologers, 
and by the priests of false religions, to their own purposes. 
No one would willingly commence an important undertaking 
on the anniversary of a day which had brought to him some 
great and irreparable calamity. It would be indecent to fix 
upon St. Bartholomew's for a day of public rejoicing in 
France ; or in Portugal upon that day in which Lisbon was 
laid in ruins by the great earthquake. On the other hand an 
English general, and an English army, would feel something 
more than their wonted hope and expectation of victory, if 
they gave the enemy battle on the anniversaries of Waterloo, 
or Blenheim, Cressy, Poictiers, or Agincourt. God be 
thanked ! neither our fleets nor armies have ever yet caused a 
day to be noted with black in the English calendar ! 

But many a good ship has lost that tide which might have 
led to fortune, because the captain and the crew thought it 
unlucky to begin their voyage on a Friday. You were in no 
danger of being left behind by the packet's sailing on that 
day, however favourable the wind, if it were possible for the 
captain to devise any excuse for remaining till the morrow 
in harbour. Lord Byron partook this superstition; and if 
anything of the slightest importance in which he was con- 
cerned were commenced on a Friday, he was seriously dis- 
concerted. 

Such, however, are the effects of superstitious animosity, 
that (as the Puritans in the next generation made Christmas 
day a fast by an ordinance of parliament) in James the First's 
reign Friday was kept as a sort of holyday. The biographer 
of a Spanish lady, who came to England for the purpose of 
secretly serving the Roman Catholic cause, says, "that 



THE DOCTOR. 147 

among- her other griefs she had that of hearing the wheel go 
round, by which they roasted whole quarters of beef on every 
Friday, dehghting to profane with forbidden food that day 
on which the Catholics, by fasting, and other works of peni- 
tence, manifested their sense, every week throughout the 
year, of the sufferings of their Lord and Saviour. In all 
English houses," he says, " both private and pubhc, (to 'which 
latter great part of the people went for their meals,) all kinds 
of meat, roasted and boiled, are seen on Fridays, Good Fri- 
day not excepted, as if it were a land of Jews or Turks. 
The nobles in particular reserve their feasts and entertain- 
ments of all kinds of meats and dehcacies for Fridays. It is 
the sport of the great, and their sort of piety, to testify by 
these sacrileges their hatred to the Roman church." 

There is probably some exaggeration in this statement ; 
and if the biographer was conversant with the history of his 
own country, he must have known that there was a time 
when his own countrymen made it a point of duty to eat pork 
on Saturdays, for the sake of despiting the Jews. But the 
practice cannot have been so common as he represents it, for 
if it had, Friday would not have retained its inauspicious 
character to the present time. Yet even this, which is in 
common opinion the most unlucky of all days, may, from 
particular circumstances, deserve, it appears, to be marked 
with a white stone. Upon a trial brought at the Chelmsford 
assizes, by a disconsolate widow against a faithless suitor, 
for breach of promise, a letter of the defendant's was pro- 
duced, containing this passage : " Miss Martha Harris, you 
say I have used you ill ; but I do not think I have at all ; for 
I told you not to count too much, lest something should hap- 
pen to disappoint. You say the day was mine ; but respect- 
ing that I said, ' If before harvest it must be very soon, or it 
would be in harvest ;' and you said, ' Fix any time soon.' But 
you said you should like to marry on a Friday, for you 
thought that a good day ; for on a Friday your husband died, 
and on a Friday I first came to see you, and Friday was mar- 
ket day." 

Old opinions, however groundless, are not often so easily 
overcome. The farmer has let precious days pass by with- 
out profiting by favourable weather, because he was warned 
against them by his almanac, or by tradition ; and for the 
same reason, measures which might have relieved and saved 
a patient, have been fatally procrastinated. There were 
about thirty days in the Christian year to which such malig- 
nant influences were imputed, that the recovery of any per- 
son who fell ill upon them was thought to be almost impos- 
sible : in any serious disease, how greatly must this persua- 
sion have increased the danger ! 

More than half the days in the year are unlucky in Mada- 
gascar ; and the Ombiasses. as the sort of bastard Mohamme- 



148 



THE DOCTOR. 



dan jugglers in that great island are called, have made the 
deluded people believe that any child born on one of these 
days will, if it be allowed to grow up, prove a parricide, be 
addicted to every kind of wickedness, and moreover be mis- 
erable throughout the whole course of its life. The infant is 
always exposed in consequence ; and unless some humaner 
parents employ a slave or relation to preserve it, and remove 
it for ever from their knowledge, it is left for beasts, birds, or 
reptiles to devour ! 

The unfortunate days in Christendom, according to the re- 
ceived superstition in different countries, were either a lit- 
tle more or less than thirty — about a twelfth part of the 
year ; the fortunate were not quite so many, all the rest 
are left, if the astrologers had so pleased, in their natural 
uncertainty. And how uncertain all were is acknowledged 
in the oldest didactics upon this subject, after what were 
then the most approved rules had been given. 

'Atoe /i£v fjixipai daiv i-ixdoviois \kiy'' Sveiap. 
"At 6' aWai neraSovTroL, aKrjpioi, ovri (pEpovrrai. 
^AXAof (5' liXXo/j/v alvei, ~avpoi <?£ r'tfracrtv. 
'AXXoTE fiTjTpvtfi TTcXsi rjfJtipr], aX\oT£ HTJTrjp. 
Td(i)v ev6aiijni)v te Kat oXpios os rdSe -dvra 
'EfJw? fpxas;?rai avahioi adavdroicriv, 
^'Opvidai Kpiviov, Kai vnepfiaaiai dXtdvwv* 

These are the days of which the careful heed 
Each human enterprise with favouring speed : 
Others there are, which intermediate fall, 
Mark'd with no auspice, and unomen'd all : 
And these will some, and those will others praise ; 
But few are vers'd in mysteries of days. 
Now as a stepmother the day we find 
Severe, and now as is a mother kind. 
Oh, fortunate the man ! oh, bless'd is he 
Who skill'd in these, fulfils his ministry : — 
He to whose note the auguries are given, 
No rite transgress'd, and void of blame to Heaven, f 

The fixed days for good and evil were said to have been 
disclosed by an angel to Job. I know not whether it comes 
from the rabbinical mint of fables that Moses determined 
upon Saturday for the Israelites' sabbath, because that day 
is governed by Saturn, and Saturn being a malignant planet, 
all manner of work that might be undertaken on the Satur- 
day might be expected not to prosper. The Sabbatarians 
might have found here an astrological argument for keeping 
their sabbath on the same day as the Jews. 

Sunday, however, is popularly supposed in France to be 
a propitious day for a Romish sabbath — which is far better 
than a Sir-A.ndrew-Agnewish one. " II est reconnu," says a 

* Hesiod. "t Elton. 



THE DOCTOR. 149 

Frencliman, whose testimony on such a point is not invali- 
dated by his madness — " que les jours de la semaine ne peu- 
vent se ressembler, puisqu'ils coulent sous I'influence de dif- 
ferentes pianettes. Le soleil, qui preside au dimanche, est 
cense nous procurer an beau jour plus riant que les autres 
jours de la semaine ; et voila aussi pourquoi on se reserve 
ce jour pour se livrer aux plaisirs et amusements honnetes." 

The Jews say that the sun always shines on Wednesdays, 
because his birthday was on Wednesday, and he keeps it in 
this manner every week. In Feyjoo's time, the Spaniards 
had a proverbial saying, that no Saturday is ever without su.ii- 
shine ; nor could they be disabused of this notion because in 
their country it is really a rare thing to have a Saturday, or 
any other day, in some part or other of which the sun is not 
seen. But on the Wednesday in Passion week th^.y held 
that it always rains, because it was on that day thai Peter 
went out and wept bitterly, and they think that it behooves the 
heavens to weep, after this manner, as if in commemoration 
of his tears. 

The saints indeed have been supposed to affect the wea- 
ther so much upon their own holydays, that a French bishop 
is said to have formed an ingenious project, for the benefit of 
a particular branch of agriculture, by reforming a small part 
of the calendar. This prelate was the Bishop of Auxerre, 
Francis d'Inteville, first of that name. He had observed 
that for many years the vineyards had suffered severely on 
certain saints' days, by frost, hail, cold rains, or blighting 
winds, and he had come to the conclusion, that though the 
said saints had their festivals during the time when the sun 
is passing through Taurus, they were nevertheless " saints 
gresleurs, geleurs, et gasteurs du bourgeon." 

Now this bishop loved good wine, commr" fait tout homme 
de bien; and he conceived that if the^a foul weather 
saints, who seemed in this respect to act as if they had en- 
rolled themselves in a tenjperance society, were to have 
their days changed, and be calendared between Christmas 
day and St. Typhaines, they might hail, and freeze, and 
bluster to their hearts' content ; and if their old festivals were 
assigned to new patrons, who were supposed to have no dis- 
like for vineyards, all would go on well. St. George, St. 
Mark, St. Philip, and St. Vitalis were some of the saints who 
were to be provided for at Christmas; St. Christopher, St. 
Dominic, St. Laurence, and St. Magdalene, the most illust i- 
ous of those who should have been installed in their places — 
for on their days '• tant s'en faut qu'on soit en danger de 
gelee, que lors mestier au nionde n'est qui tant soit de re- 
qu(-ste comme est des faiseurs de friscades, at refraischis> 
seurs de vin." These changes, however, in the samts' ad- 
ministration were not effected : and it appears bv Rabelais's 

r 



150 THE DOCTOR. 

manner of relating the fact, that the bishop never got from 
the optative to the potential mood. 

Master Rabelais says that the bishop called the mother of 
the three kings St. Typhaine ; it is certain that such a saint 
was made out of La Sainte Epiphanie, and that the three kings 
of Cologne were filiated upon her. But whether or not this 
prelate were in this respect as ignorant as his flock, he is 
praised by writers of his own communion, for having by his 
vigilance and zeal kept his diocess as long as he lived, free 
from the I.utheran pestilence. And he deserves to be praised 
by others for having given a fine organ to his cathedral, and 
a stone pulpit, which was scarcely surpassed in beauty by 
any in the whole kingdom. 

The Japanese, who are a wise people, have fixed upon the 
five most unfortunate days in the year for their five great 
festivals ; and this they have done purposely, and prudently, 
in order by this universal mirth to divert and propitiate their 
carais, or deities ; and also by their custom on those days 
of wishing happiness to each other, to avert the mishaps that 
might otherwise befall them. They too are careful never to 
begin a journey at an inauspicious time, and therefore in all 
their road and house books there is a printed table, showing 
what days of the month are unfortunate for this purpose : 
they amount to four and twenty in the year. The wise and 
experienced astrologer, Abino Seimei, who invented the ta- 
ble, was a personage endowed with divine wisdom, and the 
precious gift of prognosticating things to come. It is to be 
presumed that he derived this from his parentage, wtiich was 
very remarkable on the mother's side. Take, gentle reader, 
for thy contentment, what Lightfoot would have called no 
lean story. 

Prince Abino Jassima was in the temple of Inari, who, 
being the god and the protector of foxes, ought to have a tem- 
ple in the bishopric of Durham, and in Leicestershire, and 
wherever foxes are preserved. Foxes' lungs, it seems, were 
then as much esteemed as a medicine by the .Japanese, as fox- 
glove may be by European physicians ; and a party of cour- 
tiers were fox-hunting at this time, in order to make use of the 
lungs in a prescription. They were in full cry after a young 
fox, when the poor creature ran into the temple, and instead 
of looking for protection to the god Inari, took shelter in 
Prince Jassima's bosom. The prince on this occasion be- 
haved very well, and the fox-hunters very ill, as it may be 
feared most fox-hunters would do in similar circumstances. 
They insisted upon his turning the fox out ; he protested 
that he would commit no such crime, for a crime it would 
have been in such a case ; they attempted to take the crea- 
ture by force, and Prince Jassima behaved so bravely that he 
beat them all, and set the fox at liberty. He had a servant 
with him, but whether this servant assisted him, has not been 



THE DOCTOR. 151 

recorded ; neither is it stated that the fox god, Inari, took 
any part in the defence of his own creature and his princely- 
votary ; though from what followed, it may be presumed that 
he was far from being an unconcerned spectator. I pass 
over the historical consequences which make " the hunting 
of that day" more important in Japanese history than that 
of Chevy Chace is in our own. I pass them over because 
they are not exactly pertinent to this place. Suffice it to say 
that King Jassima, as he must now be called, revenged his 
father's murder upon these very hunters, and succeeded to 
his throne ; and then, after his victory, the fox appeared, no 
longer in vulpine form, but in the shape of a lady of incom- 
parable beauty, whom he took to wife, and by whom he be- 
came the happy father of our astrologer, Abino Seimei. 
Gratitude had moved this alopegyne, gynalopex, fox lady, or 
lady fox, to love; she told her love indeed — but she never 
told her gratitude : nor did King Jassima know, nor could he 
possibly suspect, that his lovely bride had been that very fox 
whose life he had with so much generosity and courage pre- 
served — that very fox, I say, " another and the same" — never 
did he imagine, and never could he have imagined this, till an 
extraordinary change took place in his beautiful and beloved 
wife. Her ears, her nose, her claws, and her tail began to 
grow, and by degrees this wonderful creature became a fox 
again ! My own opinion is, that she must have been a daugh- 
ter of the great fox god Inari himself. 

Abino Seimei, her son, proved to be, as might have been 
expected, a cunning personage, in the old and good meaning 
of that word. But as he inherited this cunning from his 
mysterious mother, he derived also an equal share of benev- 
olence from his kindhearted father. King Jassima : and there- 
fore, after having calculated for the good of mankind the 
table of unfortunate days, he, for their further good, composed 
a v.la, or couplet, of mystical words, by pronouncing which, 
the poor traveller who is necessitated to begin a journey upon 
one of those days may evert all those evils, which, if he were 
not preserved by such a spell, must infallibly befall him. 
He did this for the benefit of persons in humble life, who 
were compelled at any time to go wherever their lords and 
masters might send them. I know not whether Lord Byron 
would have ventured to set out on a Friday, after reciting 
these words, if he had been made acquainted with their 
value , but here they are, expressed in our own characters, 
to gratify the " curious in charms." 

" Sada Mejesi Tabicatz Fidori Josi Asijwa, 
Omojitatz Figo Kitz Nito Sen." 



152 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER XCII. P. I. 

CONCERNING PETER HOPKINS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOON 
AND TIDES UPON THE HUMAN BODY — A CHAPTER WHICH SOME 
PERSONS MAY DEEM MORE CURIOUS THAN DULL, AND OTHERS 
MORE DULL THAN CURIOUS. 

A man that travelleth to the most desirable home, hath a habit of desire to 
it all the way ; but his present business is his travel ; and horse, and com- 
pany, and inns, and ways, and weariness, &c., may take up more of his 
sensible thoughts, and of his talk and action, than his home. — Baxter. 

Few tilings in this world are useless — none, indeed, but 
what are of man's own invention. It was one of Oberlin's 
wise maxims that nothing should be destroyed, nothing 
thrown away or wasted ; he knew that every kind of refuse 
which will not serve to feed pigs, may be made to feed both 
man and beast in another way by serving for manure : per- 
haps he learned this from the Chinese proverb, that a wise 
man saves even the parings of his nails and the clippings of 
his beard for this purpose. " To burn a hair," says Darwin, 
" or a straw, unnecessarily, diminishes the sum of matter fit 
for quick nutrition, by decomposing it nearly into its ele- 
ments : and should therefore give some compunction to a 
mind of universal sympathy."' Let not this cant about uni- 
versal sympathy nauseate a reader of common sense, and 
make him regard Darwin's opinion here with the contempt 
which his affectation deserves. Everything may be of use 
to the farmer. And so it is with knowledge ; there is none, 
however vain in itself and however little it may be worth 
the pains of acquiring it, which may not at some time or 
other be turned to account. 

Peter Hopkins found that his acquaintance with astrology 
was sometimes of good service in his professional practice. 
In his days most of the almanacs contained Rules Astrolog- 
ical showing under what aspects and positions different modes 
of remedy were to be administered, and different complex- 
ions were to let blood. He had often to deal with persons 
who believed in their ahnanac as implicitly as in their 
Bible, and who studied this part of it with a more anxious 
sense of its practical importance to themselves. When these 
notions were opposed to the course of proceeding which the 
case required, he could gain his point by talking to them in 
their own language, and displaying, if it were called for, a 
knowledge of the art which might have astonished the al- 



THE DOCTOR. 153 

manac-maker himself. If he had reasoned with them upon 
any other ground, they would have retained their own opinion, 
even while they submitted to his authority; and would nei- 
ther have had faith in him nor in his prescriptions. 

Peter Hopkins would never listen to any patient who pro- 
posed waiting for a lucky day before he entered upon a pre- 
scribed course of medicine. " Go by the moon as much as 
you please," he would say ; " have your hair cut, if you think 
best, while it waxes, and cut your corns while it wanes ; and 
put off anything till a lucky day that may as well be done 
on one day as another. But the right day to be bled is when 
5'-ou want bleeding ; the right day for taking physic is when 
physic in necessary." 

He was the better able to take this course, because he him- 
self belonged to the debatable land between credulity and 
unbelief. Some one has said that the devil's dubitative is a 
negative — dubius in fide, infidelis est ;* and there are cases, 
as m Othello's, in which, from the infirmity of human nature, 
it is too often seen that 

" to be once in doubt 
Is — once to be resolved." 

There is, however, a state of mind, or, to speak more accu- 
rately, a way of thinking, in which men reverse the Welsh- 
man's conclusion in the old comedy, and instead of saying, 
" It may be, but it is very impossible," resolve within them- 
selves that it is very impossible, but it may be. So it was 
in some degree with Peter Hopkins; his education, his early 
pursuits, and his turn of mind disposed him to take part with 
what was then the common opinion of common men, and 
cotmterbalanced, if they did not perhaps a little preponderate 
against the intelligence of the age, and his own deliberate 
judgment, if he had been called upon seriously to declare it. 
He saw plainly that astrology had been made a craft by means 
whereof knaves practised upon fools ; but so had his own 
profession ; and it no more followed as a necessary conse- 
quence from the one admission that the heavenly bodies ex- 
ercised no direct influence upon the human frame, than it 
did from the other that the art of medicine was not beneficial 
to mankind. 

In the high days of astrology, when such an immediate in- 
fluence was afRrmed upon the then undisputed authority of 
St. Augustin, it was asked how it happened that the profes- 
sors of this science so frequently deceived others, and were 
deceived themselves. The answer was, that too often, in- 
stead of confining themselves within the legitimate hmits of 
the art, they enlarged their phylacteries too much. Further, 

* Sextus Pythagoras. 



154 THE DOCTOR. 

that there were many more fixed stars tlian were known to 
us, yet these also must have their influence ; and moreover, 
that the most learned professors differed upon some of the 
most important points. Nevertheless, so many causes and 
effects in the course of nature were so visibly connected, 
that men, whether astrologers or not, drew from them their 
own conclusions, and presaged accordingly : " mirum non 
est, si his et similibus solerter pensiculatis, non tam astrologi 
quam philosophi, medici, et longa experientia edocti agricolae 
et nautse, quotidie de futuris multa vera predicunt, etiam sine 
astrologiae regulis de morbis, de annona, deque tempestati- 
bus." 

All persons in Peter Hopkins's days believed that change 
of weather may be looked for at the change of the moon ; 
and all men, except a few philosophers, believe so still, and 
all the philosophers in Europe could not persuade an old 
sailor out of the belief. And that the tides have as much in- 
fluence over the human body in certain stages of disease as 
the moon has over the tides is a popular belief in many parts 
of the world. The Spaniards think that all who die of 
chronic diseases breathe their last during the ebb. Among 
the wonders of the isle and city of Cadiz, which the histo- 
rian of that city, Suares de Salazar, enumerates, one is, ac- 
cording to P. Labat, that the sick never die there while the 
tide is rising or at its height, but always during the ebb : he 
restricts the notion to the isle of Leon, but implies that the 
effect was there believed to take place in diseases of any 
kind, acute as well as chronic. " Him fever," says the negro 
in the West Indies, " shall go when the water come low. 
Him alway come hot when the tide high," 

If the negroes had ever heard the theory of the tides which 
Herrera mentions, they would readily believe it, and look 
upon it as completely explaining the ground of their asser- 
tion ; for, according to that theory, the tides are caused by a 
fever of the sea, which rages for six hours, and then inter- 
mits for as many more. 

But the effect of the tides upon the human constitution in 
certain states is not a mere vulgar opinion. Major Moor 
says, that near the tropics, especially in situations where 
the tide of the sea has a great rise and fall, scarcely any per- 
son, and certainly no one affected with feverish or nervous 
symptoms, is exempted from extraordinary sensations at the 
periods of spring tides. That these are caused by the changes 
of the moon he will not say, for he had never fully convinced 
himself, however plausible the theory, that the coincident 
phenomena of spring tides, and full and change of the moon, 
were cause and effect ; but at the conjunction and opposition, 
or, what amounts to the same, at the spring tides, these sen- 
sations are periodically felt. There is an account of one 
wngular case in which the influence was entirely lunar. 



THE DOCTOR. 155 

When Mr. Gait was travelling in the Morea he fell in with a 
peasant, evidently in an advanced stage of dropsy, who told 
him that his father had died of a similar complaint, but differ- 
ing from his in this remarkable respect: the father's con- 
tinued to grow regularly worse, without any intervals of al- 
leviation ; but at the change of the moon the son felt com- 
paratively much easier. As the moon advanced to the full 
the sweUing enlarged ; and as she waned it again lessened. 
Still, however, though this alteration continued, the disease 
was gaining ground. 

*' The moon," Mr. Gait observes, " has, or is believed to 
have, nmch more to say in the affairs of those parts than 
with us. The climate is more regular ; and, if the air have 
tides, like the ocean, of course their effects are more percept- 
ible." 

In an early volume of the Philosophical Transactions are 
some observations made by Mr. Paschal on the motions of 
diseases, and on the births and deaths of men and other ani- 
mals, in different parts of the day and night. Having sus- 
pected, he says, that the causes of the tides at sea exert their 
power elsewhere, though the effect may not be so sensibly 
perceived on the solid as on the fluid parts of the globe, he 
divided, for trial of this notion, the natural day into four sen- 
aries of hours ; the first consisting of three hours before the 
moon's southing, and three after, the second of the six hours 
following, and the third and fourth contained the two re- 
maining quarters of the natural day. Observing then the 
times of birth and death, both in human and other subjects, 
as many as came within the circle of his knowledge, he 
found, he says, none that were born or died a natural death 
in the first and third senaries, (which he called first and sec- 
ond tides,) but every one either in the second or fourth sen- 
aries (which he called the first and second ebbs.) He then 
made observations upon the motions of diseases, other cir- 
cumstances connected with the human frame, alterations of 
the weather, and such accounts as he could meet with of 
earthquakes and other things, and he met with nothing to 
prevent him from laying down this as a maxim : that motion, 
vigour, action, strength, &c., appear most and do best in the 
tiding senaries, and that rest, relaxation, decay, dissolution, 
belong to the ebbing ones. 

This theorist must have been strongly possessed with a 
favourite opinion before he could imagine that the deep sub- 
terranean causes of earthquakes could in any degree be af- 
fected by the tides. But that the same influences which oc- 
casion the ebb and flow of the ocean have an effect upon cer- 
tain diseases is a conclusion to which Dr. Pinckard came in 
the West Indies, and Dr. Balfour in the East, from what they 
observed in the course of their own practice, and what they 
collected from the information of others. '• In Bengal," Dr. 



156 THE DOCTOR. 

Balfour says, " there is no room to doubt that the human 
frame is affected by the influences connected with the rela- 
tive situations of the sun and moon. In certain states of 
health and vigour this influence has not power to show itself 
by any obvious eflfects, and in such cases its existence is often 
not acknowledged. But in certain states of debility and dis- 
ease it is able to manifest itself by exciting febrile parox- 
ysms. Such paroxysms show themselves more frequently 
during the period of the spring tides, and as these advance 
become more violent and obstinate, and on the other hand 
tend no less invariably to subside and terminate during the 
recess." 

" I have no doubt," says this practitioner, " that any physician 
who will carefully attend to the diurnal and nocturnal returns 
of the tides, and will constantly hold before him the prevail- 
ing tendency of fevers to appear at the commencement, and 
during the period of the spring; and to subside and terminate 
'at the commencement and during the period of the recess, 
will soon obtain more information respecting the phenomena 
of fevers, and be able to form more just and certain judg- 
ments and prognostics respecting every event, than if he 
were to study the history of medicine, as it is now vv^ritten, 
for a thousand years. There is no revolution or change in 
the course of fevers that may not be explained by there gen- 
eral principles in a manner consistent with the laws of the 
human constitution, and of the great system of revolving 
: bodies which unite together in producing them." 

Dr Balfour spared no pains in collecting information to 
elucidate and confirm his theory during the course of thirty 
years' practice in India. He communicated upon it with 
most of the European practitioners in the company's domin- 
ions ; and the then governor-general, Lord T'iignmouth, con- 
sidered the subject as so important, that he properly as well 
as liberally ordered the correspondence and the treatise, in 
which its results were imbodied, to be printed and circulated 
at the expense of the government. The author drew up his 
scheme of an astronomical ephemeris, for the purposes of 
medicine and meteorology, and satisfied himself that he had 
discovered the laws of febrile paroxysms, and unfolded a 
history and theory of fevers entirely new, consistent with 
itself in every part, and with the other appearances of na- 
ture, perfectly conformable to the laws discovered by the 
immortal Newton, and capable of producing important im- 
provements in medicine and meteorology. He protested 
against objections to his theory as if it were connected with 
the wild and groundless delusions of astrology. Yet the 
letter of his correspondent, Dr. Helenus Scott, of Bombay, 
shows how naturally and inevitably it would be connected 
with them in that country. " The influence of the moon on 
the human body," says that physician, " has been observed 



THE DOCTOR. 157 

in this part of India by every medical practitioner. It is 
universally acknowledged by the doctors of all colours, of 
all casts, and of all countries. The people are taught to 
believe it in their infancy, and as they grow up, they ac- 
knowledge it from experience. I suppose that in the north- 
ern latitudes this power of the moon is far less sensible than 
in India. Here we universally think that the state of weakly 
and diseased bodies is much influenced by its motions. 
Every full and change increases the number of the patients 
of every practitioner. That the human body is affected in 
a remarkable manner by them I am perfectly convinced, and 
that an attention to the power of the moon is highly neces- 
sary to the medical practitioner in India." 

This passage tends to confirm, what indeed no judicious 
person can doubt, that the application of astrology to medi- 
cine, though it was soon perverted, and debased till it be- 
came a mere craft, originated in actual observations of the 
connection between certain bodily affections, and certain 
times and seasons. Many, if not most of the mischievous 
systems in physic and divinity have arisen from dim percep- 
tions or erroneous apprehensions of some important truth. 
And not a few have originated in the common error of draw- 
ing bold and hasty inferences from weak premises. Sailors 
say, what they of all men have most opportunities of ob- 
serving, that the moon as it rises clears the sky of clouds : 
" A puesta del sol," says a Spanish chronicler, " parescio la 
luna, e comio poco a poco todas las nuves." The " learned 
and reverend" Dr. Goad, some time master of Merchant Tai- 
lors' School, published a work " of vast pains, reading, and 
many years experience," which he called " Astro-Meteorolo- 
gia, or a Demonstration of the influences of the Stars in the 
Alterations of the Air; proving that there is not an earth- 
quake, comet, parhelia, halo, thunder storm or tempest, or 
any other phenomena, but is referable to its particular plan- 
etary aspect, as the subsolar cause thereof." 



CHAPTER XCIII. P. I. 

>5ARKS OF AN IMPATIENT READER ANTICIPATED AND ANSWERED. 



^iZ TToAAa Xt'^aj dpTi KavdvrjT' eizn, 
Oil ixvrjfioveveii ovket' ov6iv. 

Sophocles. 



Novel readers are sometimes so impatient to know how 
the story is to end, that they look at the last chapter, and so 
—escape, should 1 say — or forfeit that state of agitating sus- 
pense in which it was the author or authoress's endeavour 

17* 



168 THE DOCTOR. 

to keep them till they should arrive by a regular perusal at 
the well-concealed catastrophe. It may be apprehended that 
persons of this temper, having in their composition much 
more of Eve's curiosity than of Job's patience, will regard 
with some displeasure a work like the present, of which the 
conclusion is not before them ; and some, perhaps, may even 
be so unreasonable as to complain that they go through 
chapter after chapter without making any progress in the 
story. " What care the public," says one of these readers, 
(for every reader is a self-constituted representative of that 
great invisible body,) " what do the public care for astrology 
and almanacs, and the influence of the tides upon diseases, 
and Mademoiselle des Roches's flea, and the Koran, and the 
chronology of this fellow's chapters, and Potteric Carr, and 
the corporation of Doncaster, and the therry of signatures, 
and the philosophy of the alchymists, and the devil knows 
what besides ! What have these things to do with the sub- 
ject of the book, and who would ever have looked for them 
in a novel !" 
*' A novel do you call it, Mr. Reader ?" 
" Yes, Mr. Author, what else should I call it 1 It has been 
reviewred as a novel and advertised as a novel." 

" I confess that in this very day's newspaper it is adver- 
tised in company with four new novels ; the first in the list 
being * Warleigh, or the Fatal Oak,' a Legend of Devon, by 
Mrs. Bray ; the second, ' Dacre,' edited by the Countess of 
Morley ; Mr. James's * Life and Adventures of John Marston 
Hair is the third ; fourthly, comes the dear name of ' The 
Doctor ;' and last in the list, ' The Court of Sigismund Au- 
gustus, or Poland in the Seventeenth Century.' " 

I present my comphments to each and all of the authoresses 
and authors with whom I find myself thus associated. At 
the same time I beg leave to apologize for this apparent intru- 
sion into their company, and to assure them that the honour 
which I have thus received has been thrust upon me. Dr. 
Stegman had four patients whose disease was that they saw 
themselves double: "they perceived," says Mr. Turner, 
" another self, exterior to themselves !" I am not one of Dr. 
Stegman's patients ; but I see myself double in a certain 
sense, and in that sense have another and distinct self—the 
one incog., the other out of cog. Out of cog. I should be 
as willing to meet the novelist of the Polish court, as any 
other unknown brother or sister of the quill. Out of cog. ] 
should be glad to shake hands with Mr. James, converse 
with him about Charlemagne, and urge him to proceed with 
his French biography. Out of cog. I should have much 
pleasure in making my bow to Lady Morley or her editee. 
Out of cog. I should like to be introduced to Mrs. Bray in 
her own lovely land of Devon, and see the sweet innocent 
face of her humble friend Mary Colling. But without a 



THE DOCTOR. 159 

proper introduction I should never think of presenting my- 
self to any of these persons ; and having incog, the same 
sense of propriety as out of cog., I assure them that the 
manner in which my one self has been associated with them 
is not the act and deed of my other self, but that of Messrs. 
Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, my 
very worthy and approved good publishers. 

" Why, Mr. Author, you do not mean to say that the 
book is not printed as a novel, does not appear as one, and 
is not intended to pass for one 1 Have you the face to 
deny it ?" 

" Lecteur, mon ami, la demande est bien faite sans doute, 
et bien apparente ; mais la response vous contentera, ou j'ai 
ie sens malgallefretu !" 

"Lec/ewr, mon ami! an incog, has no face. But this I say 
in the face, or in all the faces of that public which has more 
heads than a Hindoo divinity, that the character and contents 
of the book were fairly, fully, carefully, and considerately 
denoted — that is to say, notified or madft known in the title 
page. Turn to it, I entreat you, sir ! The first thing which 
you cannot but notice, is, that it is in motley. Ought you 
not to'lTave inferred, concerning the 9,uthor, that in his brain 

he hath strange places cramm'd 
With observation, the which he vents 
In mangled forms ?* 

And if you could fail to perceive the conspicuous and capa» 
clous 

which in its omnisignifican<^ may promise anything, and 
yet pledges the writer to nothing ; and if you could also 
orerlook the mysterioup "monograph 




your attention w:s invited to all this by a sentence of Butler's, 
on the opposite lage, so apposite that it seems as if he had 



Shakspeare. 



160 THE DOCTOR. 

written it with a second sight of the apphcation thus to bo 
made of it: ' There is a kind of physiognomy in the titles 
of books no less than in the faces of men, by which a skilful 
observer will as well know what to expect from the one as 
the other.' This w^as the remark of one whose wisdom can 
never be obsolete ; and whose wit, though much of it has 
become so, it will always be worth while for an Englishman 
to study and to understand." 

Mr. DTsraeli has said that " the false idea which a title 
conveys is alike prejudicial to the author and the reader, and 
that titles are generally too prodigal of their promises ;" but 
yet there is an error on the other hand to be avoided, for if 
they say too little they may fail of attracting notice. I bore 
in mind what Baillet says upon this subject, to which he has 
devoted a long chapter : " Le titre d"un livre doit etre son 
abrege, et il en doit renfermer tout I'esprit, autant qu'il est 
possible. II doit etre le centre de toutes les paroles et de 
toutes les pensees du livre ; de telle sorte qu'on n'y en 
puisse pae ui^iijc; irouver une qui ny dit de la correspon- 
dance et du rapport." From this rule there has been no de- 
parture. Everything that is said of Peter Hopkins relates 
•to the doctor prospectively, because he was the doctor's 
master; everything that may be said of, or from myself, 
relates to the doctor retrospectively, or reflectively, because 
he, though in a different sense, was mine: and everything 
that is said about anything else, relates to him collaterally, 
being either derivative or tributary, either divergent from 
the main subject, or convergent to its main end. 

But albeit I claim the privilege of motley, and in right 
thereof 

I must ha-^^, liberty 
Withal, as largea char-jr as the wind, 
To blow on w^hom I pleas^ ;* 

yet I have in no instance abused that cWter, or visited any 
one too roughly. Nor will I ever do against the world what 
John Kinsaider did, in unseemly defiance— nor against the 
wind either ; though it has been no maxim of mine, nor 
ever shall be, to turn with the tide, or go with the crowd 
unless they are going my road, and there is no other way 
that I can take to escape the annoyatvce of their company. 

" And is this any reason, Mr. Author, why you shouj^ ^et 
on as slowly with the story of your book as the Houst ^f 
Commons with the business of the nation, in the present re- 
formed parliament, with Lord Althorpe for its leader?" 

" Give me credit, sir, for a temper as imperturbably good 
as that wiiich Lord Althorpe presents, ^ke a sevenfold 

* Shakspeare. 



THE DOCTOR. 161 

shield of lamb's wool, to cover him against all attacks, and 
I will not complain of the disparagement implied in your 
comparison." 

" Your confounded good temper, Mr. Author, seems to 
pride itself upon trying experiments on the patience of your 
readers. Here I am, near the end of the last volume, and 
if any one asked me what the book is about, it would be im- 
possible for me to answer the question. I have never been 
able to guess at the end of one chapter what was likely to 
be the subject of the next." 

" Let me reply to that observation, sir, by an anecdote. A 
collector of scarce books was one day showing me his small 
but curious hoard: * Have you ever seen a copy of this 
bookV he asked, with every rare volume that he put into 
my hands ; and when my reply was that I had not, he 
always rejoined, with a look and tone of triumphant delight, 
' I should have been exceedingly sorry if you had !' 

*' Let me tell you another anecdote, not less to the pur- 
pose. A thorough-bred foxhunler found himself so much out 
of health a little before the season for his sport began, that 
he look what was then thought a long journey to consult a 
pVvysician, and get some advice which he hoped would put 
him into a condition for taking the field. Upon his return 
his frif.nds asked him what the doctor had said. * Why,' 
said the -squire, ' he told me that I've got a dyspepsy. I 
don't know^vhat that is ; but it's some damned thing or other, 
I suppose.' My good sir, however much at a loss you may be 
to guess what is coming in the next chapter, you can have no 
apprehension that it may turn out anything like what he, with 
too much reason, supposed a dyspepsy to be. 

" Lecleur, mon ami, { have given you the advantage of a 
motto from Sophocles ; ^nd were it as apposite to me as it 
seems applicable when coming from you, I might content 
myself with replying to it in a couplet of the honest old wine- 
bibbing Water Poet ; — 

' That man may well be called an idle mome 
That mocks the cock because he wears a comb.' 

j3ut no one who knows a hawk from a heronshaw, or a sheep's 
head from a carrot, or the Lord Chancellor Brougham, in his 
wig and robes, from a Guy Vaux on the fifth of' November, 
can be so mistaken in judgment as to say that I make use 
of many words in making nothing understood ; nor as to 
think me, 

avOpu)iTov aYpiOTTolov, aiiOaSdarofiov, 
exov'''' dxaXivov, uKpares, diz^Xwrov crdud, 
a7r£pi\dXr)T0V, KOfinocpaKEXopprjfjL.ova.* 

* AristophaneB. 



162 THE DOCTOR. 

" Any subject is inexhaustible if it be fully treated of ; that 
is, if it be treated doctrinally and practically, analytically and 
synthetically, historically and morally, critically, popularly, 
and eloquently, philosophically, exegetically, and aesthetic- 
ally, logically, neologically, etymologically, archaiologic- 
ally, Daniologically, and Doveologically, which is to say, 
summing up all in one, doctorologically. 

" Now, ray good reader, whether I handle my subject in any 
of these ways, or in any other legitimate way, this is cer- 
tain, that I never handle it as a cow does a musket ; and 
that I have never wandered from it, not even when you have 
drawn me into a tattle-de-moy." 

" Auctor incomparabilisy what is a tattle-de-moy ?" 

" Lecteur, mon ami, you shall now know what to expect in 
the next chapter, for I will tell you there what a tattle-de- 
moy is." 



CHAPTER XCIV. P. I. 

THE AUTHOR DISCOVERS CERTAIN MUSICAL CORRESPONDSl'CES TO 
THESE HIS LUCUBRATIONS. 

And music mild I learn'd, that tells 
Tune, time, and measure of the song. 

HliiGINS. 

A TATTLE-DE-MOY, reader, was " a newfashioned thing" in 
the year of our Lord 1676, " much like a seraband, only it 
had in it more of conceit and of humour, and it might supply 
the place of a seraband at the end of a suit of lessons at any 
time." That simpleheaited, and therefore happy old man, 
Thomas Mace, invented it himself, because he would be a 
little modish, he said ; and he called it a tattle^de-moy, " be- 
cause it tattles, and seems to speak those very words or syl- 
lables. Its humour," said he, " is toyish, jocund, harmless, 
and pleasant ; and as if it were one playing with or tossing a 
ball up and down ; yet it seems to have a very solemn coun- 
tenance, and like unto one of a sober and innocent condition 
or disposition ; not antic, apish, or wild." 

If, indeed, the gift of prophecy were imparted, or imputed 
to musicians as it has sometimes been to poets, Thomas 
Mace might be thought to have unwittingly foreshown cer- 
tain characteristics of the unique opus which is now before 
the reader : so nearly haa he described them when instruct- 



THE DOCTOR. 163 

ing his pupils how to give right and proper names to all les- 
sons they might meet with. 

" There are, first, preludes ; then, secondly, fancies and 
voluntaries ; thirdly, pavines ; fourthly, allmaines ; fifthly, 
airs; sixthly, galliards ; seventhly, corantoes ; eighthly, se- 
rabands ; ninthly, tattle-de-moys ; tenthly, chichonas ; elev- 
enthly, toys or jigs; twelfthly, common tunes ; and, lastly, 
grounds, with divisions upon them. 

" The prelude is commonly a piece of confused, wild, 
shapeless kind of intricate play, (as most use it,) in which 
no perfect form, shape, or uniformity can be perceived ; but 
a random business, pottering and groping, up and down, 
from one stop, or key, to another; and generally so per- 
formed, to make trial, whether the instrument be well in 
tune or not; by which doing after they have completed 
their tuning, they will (if they be masters) fall into some 
kind of voluntary or fanciful play more intelligible ; which 
(if he be a master able) is a way whereby he may more 
fully and plainly show his excellence and ability, than by any 
other kind of undertaking ; and has an unlimited and un- 
bounded liberty, in which he may make use of the forms 
and shapes of all the rest." 

Here the quasi-prophetic lutanist may seem to have de- 
scribed the ante-initial chapters of this opus, and those 
other pieces which precede the beginning thereof, and re- 
semble 

A lively prelude, fashioning the way 
In which the voice shall wander.* 

For though a censorious reader will pick out such expres- 
sions only as maybe applied with a malign meaning; yet 
in what he may consider confused and shapeless, and call 
pottering and groping, the competent observer will recog- 
nise the hand of a master, trying his instrument and tuning 
it ; and then passing into a voluntary, whereby he approves 
his skill, and foreshows the spirit of his performance. 

The pavines. Master Mace tells us, are lessons of two, 
three, or four strains, very grave and solemn ; full of art and 
profundity, but seldom used in " these our light days," as in 
many respects he might well call the days of King Charles the 
Second. Here he characterizes our graver chapters, which 
are in strains so deep, so soothing, and so solemn withal, 
that if such a pavine had been played in the hall of the pal- 
ace at Aix, when King Charlemagne asked the archbishop 
to dance, the invitation could not have been deemed inde- 
corous. 

Allmaines are very airy and lively, and generally in com- 

* Keats. 



164 THE DOCTOR. 

men or plain time. Airs differ from them only in being usu- 
ally shorter, and of a more rapid and nimble performance. 
With many of these have the readers of The Doctor been 
amused. 

Galliards, being grave and sober, are performed in a slow 
and large triple time. Some of the chapters relating to the 
history of Doncaster come under this description : especially 
that concerning its corporation, which may be called a gal- 
liard par excellence. 

The corantoes are of a shorter cut, and of a quicker triple 
time, full of sprightfulness and vigour, lively, brisk, and 
cheerful : the serabands of the shortest triple time, and 
more toyish and light than the corantoes. There are of both 
kinds in these volumes, and skilfully are they alternated with 
the pavines. 

Now the musician 
Hovers with nimble stick o'er squeaking crowd, 
Tickling the dried guts of a mewing cat ;* 

and anon a strain is heard — 

Not wanting power to mitigate and swage. 
With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chase 
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain 
From mortal or immortal minds, f 

And there are chichonas, also, which consist of a few con- 
ceited notes in a grave kind of humour ; these are the chapters 
which the Honourable Fastidious Feeblewit condemns as be- 
ingin bad taste, and which Lord Makemotion Ganderman pro- 
nounces poor stuff; but at which Yorickson smiles, Mac- 
swift's countenance brightens, and Fitzrabelais laughs out- 
right. 

No prophecies can be expected to go upon all fours ; and 
nothing in this opus corresponds to Master Mace's toys, or 
jigs, which are " light, squibbish things, only fit for fantas- 
tical and easy, lightheaded people;" nor to his common 
tunes. 

Last in his enumeration is the ground : this, he says, is * a 
set number of slow notes, very grave and stately; which, af- 
ter it is expressed once or twice very plainly, then he that 
hath good brains and a good hand, undertakes to play sev- 
eral divisions upon it, time after time, till he hath shown his 
bravery, both of invention and execution." My worthy 
friend Dr. Dense can need no hint to make him perceive how 
happily this applies to the ground of the present work, and 
the manner of treating it. And if Mr. Dulman disputes the 

*■ Marston, + Milton. 



THE DOCTOR. 165 

application, it can only be because he is determined not to 
see it. All his family are remarkable for obstinacy. 

And here taking leave for a while of the good old lutanist, 
I invite the serious and the curious to another pavine among 
the stars. 



CHAPTER XCV. P. I. 

WHEREIN MENTION IS MADE OF LORD BYRON, RONSARD, RABBI 
KAPOL, AND CO. — IT IS SUGGESTED THAT A MODE OF READING 
THE STARS HAS BEEN APPLIED TO THE RECOVERY OF OB- 
LITERATED ROMAN INSCRIPTIONS ; AND IT IS SHOWN THAT A 
MATHEMATICIAN MAY REASON MATHEMATICALLY, AND YET 
LIKE A FOOL. 

Thus may ye behold 
This man is very bold, 
And in his learning old 
Intendeth for to sit. 
I blame him not a whit ; 
For It would vex his wit, 
And clean against his earning 
To follow sucfi learning 
As nowadays is taught. 

DocTOUR Doubble-Ale. 

Lord Byron calls the stars the poetry of heaven, having 
perhaps in mind Ben Jonson's expression concerning bell- 
ringing. Ronsard calls them the characters of the sky : 

" Alors que Vesper vient embrunir nos yeux, 
Attache dans le ciel je contemple les cieux, 
En qui Dieu nous escrit, en notes non obscures, 
Les sorts et les destins de toutes creatures. 
Car luy, en desdaignant (comme font les humains) 
D'avoir encre et papier et plume entre les mains, 
Par les astres du ciel, qui sont ses caracteres, 
Les choses nous predit et bonnes et contraires. 
Mais les hommes, chargez de terres et du trespas, 
Meprisent tel escrit, et ne le lisent pas." 

The great French poet of his age probably did not know 
that what he thus said was actually believed by the Cabal- 
ists. According to them the ancient Hebrews represented 
the stars, severally and collectively, by the letters of their 
alphabet; to read the stars, therefore, was more than a met- 
aphorical expression with them. And an astral alphabet for 
genethliacal purposes was published near the close of the 



166 THE DOCTOR. 

fifteenth century, at Cracow, by Rabbi Kapol Ben Samuel, 
in a work entitled "The Profundity of Profundities." 

But as this would rest upon an insecure foundation — for 
who could be assured that the alphabet had been accurately 
made out] — it has been argued that the heavens are repeat- 
edly in the Scriptures called a book, whence it is to be in- 
ferred that they contain legible characters: that the first 
verse of the first chapter of Genesis ought to be translated 
" In the beginning God created the letter, or character of the 
heavens ;" and that in the nineteenth Psalm we should read 
" their line," instead of " their sound has gone forth into all 
lands," this referring to their arrangement in the firmament 
like letters upon a roll of parchment. Jews, Platonists, and 
fathers of the church, are shown to have believed in this 
celestial writing. And there can be no question but that 
both the language and the characters must be Hebrew, that 
being the original speech, and those the original characters, 
and both divinely communicated to man, not of human inven- 
tion. But single stars are not to be read as letters, as in the 
astral alphabet. This may be a convenient mode of noting 
them in astronomical observations ; the elements of this 
celestial science are more recondite in proportion as the 
science itself is more mysterious. An understanding eye 
may distinguish that the stars in their groups form Hebrew 
letters, instead of those imaginary shapes which are called 
the signs of the Zodiac. 

But as the stars appear to us only as dots of light, much 
skill and sagacity are required for discovering how they 
combine into the complex forms of the Hebrew alphabet. 
The astral scholar reads them as antiquaries have made out 
inscriptions upon Roman buildings by the marks of the nails, 
when the letters themselves had been torn away by rapa- 
cious hands for the sake of the metal. Indeed it is not un- 
likely that the Abbe Barthelemi took the hint from the curi- 
ously credulous work of his countryman, Gaff'arel, who has 
given examples of this celestial writing from the Rabbis 
Kapol, Chomer, and Abiudan. In these examples the stars 
are represented by white spots upon the black lines of the 
Hebrew letter. The abbe, when he writes upon this sub- 
ject to Count Caylus, seems not to have known that Peiresc 
had restored ancient inscriptions by the same means ; if, 
however, he followed the example of Peiresc without choos- 
ing to mention his name, that omni-erudite man himself is 
likely to have seen the books from whence Gatfarel derived 
his knowledge. 

There is yet another difficulty ; even the book of heaven 
is not stereotyped ; its types are continually changing with 
the motion of the heavenly bodies, and changes of still 
greater importance are made by the appearance of new 
stars. 



THE DOCTOR. 167 

One important rule is to be observed in perusing this 
great stelliscript. He who desires to learn what good they 
prefigure, must read them from west to east ; but if he would 
be forewarned of evil, he must read from north to west ; in 
either case beginning with the stars that are most vertical 
to him. For the first part of this rule, no better reason has 
been assigned than the conjectural one, that there is a pro- 
priety in it, the free and natural motion of the stars being 
from west to east ; but for the latter part a sufficient cause 
is found in the words of the Prophet Jeremiah: Septentrione 
pandetur malum, " Out of the North evil shall break forth." 

Dionyse Settle was persuaded that Martin Frobisher, being 
a Yorkshire man, had, by his voyage in search of a north- 
west passage, repelled the rehearsal of those opprobrious 
words; not only he, but many worthy subjects more, as well 
as the said Dionyse, who was in the voyage himself, being 
" Yorkshire too." 

IJut why should evil come from the North ] "I conceive," 
says Gaffarel, "it would stand with sound philosophy to 
answer, by reason of the darkness and gloominess of the air 
of those parts, caused by the great distance of the sun ; and 
also by reason of the evil spirits which inhabit dark places." 
This reason becomes stronger when it is considered that the 
word which in the Vulgate is rendered pandetur^ may also be 
rendered depingetur, so that the verse might be translated, 
" All evils shall be described (or written) from the North ;" 
and if written, then certainly to be read from that direction. 

This theory of what Southey has called " the language of 
the lights of Heaven," is Jewish. Abu Almasar (nominally 
well known as Albumazar, by which name the knaves called 
him who knew nothing of him or his history) derived all 
religions from the planets. The Chaldean, he said, was pro 
duced by the conjunction of Jupiter with Mars ; the Egyptian 
by Jupiter with the sun ; Judaism, by Jupiter with Saturn ; 
Christianity, by Jupiter with Mercury ; Mohammedanism, 
by Jupiter with Venus. And in the year 1460, when, accord- 
ing to his calculation, the conjunction of Jupiter and Mercu- 
ry would again occur, he predicted that the Christian re- 
ligion would receive its deathblow, and the religion of anti- 
christ begin. Pursuing these fancies, others have asserted 
that the reason why the Jewish nation always has been 
miserable, and always must be so, is because the irreligion 
was formed under the influences of Saturn : 

Spiteful and cold, an old man melancholy. 
With bent and yellow forehead, he is Saturn.* 

A malevolent planet he is, and also an unfortunate one, and 
it was he that, 

» Wallenstein. 



168 THE DOCTOR. 

Willi lead-coloured shine lighting it into life,* 

threw a tincture of severity and moroseness over the reli- 
gion of the Jews ; he it was that made them obstinate and 
covetous, and their Sabbath, accordingly, is his day. In like 
manner the character of the Turks and their day of rest 
have been determined by the planet Venus, which is the star 
of their religion. And as Christianity began under the influ- 
ence of the sun, Sunday is 'the Christian Sabbath ; and the 
visible head of the Christian church has his seat in Rome, 
which is a solar city, its foundations having been laid when 
the sun was in Leo, his proper house. Further proof of this 
influence is, that the cardinals wear red, which is a solar 
colour. 

Dr. Jenkin, in his Discourses upon the Reasonableness and 
certainty of the Christian Religion, takes into his considera- 
tion the opinion of those persons who thought that the stars 
would shine to little purpose unless there were other habit- 
able worlds besides this earth whereon we dwell. One of 
the uses for which they serve he supposes to be this, that in 
all ages the wits of many men whose curiosity might other- 
wise be very ill employed, have been busied in considering 
their end and nature, and calculating their distances and mo- 
tions : a whimsical argument, in advancing which he seems 
to have forgotten the mischievous purposes to which so 
much of the wit which had taken this direction had been 
applied. 

Yet these fancies of the wildest astrologers are not more 
absurd than the grave proposition of John Craig, whose 
" Theologiag Christianae Principia Mathematica" were pub- 
lished in London at the close of the seventeenth century. 
He asserted, and pretended to show by mathematical calcu- 
lations, that the probability of the truth of the Gospel history 
was as strong at that time, as they would have been in the 
days of the Saviour himself, to a person who should have 
heard it related by twenty-eight disciples ; but that, \ipon the 
same mathematical grounds, the probability will entirely 
cease by the year 3150; there would then be no more faith 
on earth, and, consequently, according to St. Luke, the world 
would then be at an end, and the Son of man would come to 
judge the quick and the dead. 

Bayle always ridiculed that sort of evidence which is calltni 
mathematical demonstration. 

* Wallenstein. 



THE DOCTOR. 169 



CHAPTER XCVI. P. I. 

V musician's wish excited by HERSCHEl's telescope SYM- 
PATHY BETWEEN PETER HOPKINS AND HIS PUPIL INDIFFER- 

ENTISM USEFUL IN ORDINARY CASES, BUT DANGEROUS IN RE- 
LIGION. 

Noi intendiamo parlare alle cose che utili sono alia umana vita, quanto 
per nostro intendimento si potra in questa parte comprende»re ; e sopra 
quelle particelle che detto avemo di comporre. — Busone da Gubbio. 

When Miller talked of his friend Herschel's good fortune, 
and of his astronomical discoveries, and of his sister. Miss 
Caroline Herschel, who, while in his absence she could get 
possession of his twenty-feet reflector, amused herself with 
sweeping the sky, and searching for comets in the neighbour- 
hood of the sun, the warmhearted and musical-minded man 
used to wish that the science of acoustics had been advanced 
in the same degree as that of optics, and that his old friend, 
when he gave up music as a profession, had ^till retained it 
as a pursuit; for, had he constructed >.; uitory tubes of pro- 
portionate power and magnitude to his great telescope, " who 
knows," said Miller, "but we might have been enabled to 
hear the music of the spheres !" Pythagoras used to listen 
to that music, when he retired into the depths of his own 
being; and, according to his disciples, to him alone of all 
mortals has it been audible. But philosophers in modern 
times have thought that the existence of this music is more 
than an enthusiast's dream, a poft's fiction, or an impostoi's 
fahle. They say it may be inferred as probable from some 
of Newton's discoveries; and as a consequence of that prin- 
ciple of harmony which iii some parts of the system of 
nature is so clearly shown, and in others so mysteriously 
indicated. 

As for the doctor, when Miller talked to him of Miss 
Herschel's performances in sky-sweeping and comet-hunt- 
ing, it reminded him of the nursery song, and he quoted the 
lines : — 

" Old woman, old woman, whither so high? 
I'm going to sweep cobwebs off the sky, 
And I shall be back again by-and-by :" 

not meaning, however, any disrespect to the lady, nor know 
ing anything of her age. 
Herschel would have opened no new field of speculation 



170 THE DOCTOR. 

for Peter Hopkins, if Hopkins had lived till that day ; but he 
would have eradicated the last remains of his lurking belief 
in astrology, by showing how little those who pretended to 
read the stars had seen or known of them. The old man 
would have parted with it easily, though he delighted in ob- 
solete knowledge, and took as much interest in making himself 
acquainted with the freaks of the human mind, as with the mal- 
adies of the human frame. He thought that they belonged to 
the same study ; and the affection which he had so soon con- 
tracted for his pupil, was in no small degree occasioned by 
his perceiving in him a kindred disposition. Mr. Danby says, 
" there is perhaps more of instinct in our feelings than we 
are aware of, even in our esteem of each other;" it is one of 
the many wise remarks of a thoughtful man. 

This intellectual sympathy contributed much to the hap- 
piness of both, and no little to the intellectual progress of 
the younger party. But Hopkins's peculiar humour had ren- 
dered him indifferent upon some points of great moment. It 
had served as a prophylactic against all political endemics, 
and this had been a comfortable security for him in times 
when such disorders were frequent and violent ; and when, 
though far less malignant than those of the present age, they 
were far more dangerous, in individual cases. The reader 
may perhaps remember, (and if not, he is now reminded of 
it,) how, when he was first introduced to Peter Hopkins, it 
was said that any king would have had in him a quiet subject, 
and any church a contented conformist. He troubled him- 
self with no disputations in religion, and was troubled with 
no doubts, but believed what he was taught to believe, because 
he had been taught to believe it ; and owing to the same 
facihty of mind, under any change of dynasty, or revolution 
of government that could have befallen, he would have 
obeyed the ruling power. Such would always be the politics 
of the many, if they were let alone ; and such would always 
be their religion. As regards the civil point, this is the best 
condition in which a people can be, both for themselves and 
their rulers ; and if the laws be good and well administered, 
the form of government is good so far as it is causative of 
those effects, and so far as it is not causative, it is a trifle for 
which none but fools would contest. The proper end of all 
government being the general good, provided that good be 
attained, it is infinitesimally insignificant by what means. 
That it can be equally attained under any form, is not as- 
serted here. The argument from the analogy of nature, 
which might seem to favour such an assertion, cannot be 
maintained. The bees have their monarchy, and the ants 
their republic ; but when we are told to go to the ant and 
the bee, and consider their ways, it is not that we should 
borrow from them formic laws or apiarian policy. Under 
the worst scheme of government, the desired end would be 



THE DOCTOR. 171 

in a great degree attainable, if the people were trained up as 
they ought to be in the knowledge of their Christian duties; 
and unless they are so trained, it must ever be very imper- 
fectly attained under the best. 

Forms of government alone deserving to be so called of 
whatever kind, are here intended, not those of savage or 
barbarous times and countries. Indeed it is only in ad- 
vanced stages of society that men are left sufficiently to 
themselves to become reasonably contented; and then they 
may be expected, like our friend Peter Hopkins, to be better 
subjects than patriots. It is desirable that they should be 
so. For good subjects promote the public good at all times, 
and it is only in evil times that patriots are wanted — such 
times as are usually brought on by rash, or profligate and 
wicked men, who assume the name. 

From this political plasticity, in his days and in his station, 
no harm could arise either to himself or others. But the 
same temperament in religion, though doubtless it may reach 
the degree of saving faith, can hardly consist with an active 
and imaginative mind. It was fortunate, therefore, for the 
doctor, that he found a religious friend in Mr. Bacon. 
While he was at Leyden, his position in this respect had not 
been favourable. Between the Dutch language and the 
burgemeester's daughter, St. Peter's Kirk had not been a 
scene of much devotion for him. Perhaps many churches in 
his own country might have produced no better effect upon 
him at that time of life ; but the loose opinions which Bayle 
had scattered were then afloat in Holland, and even these 
were less dangerous to a disposition such as his, than the 
fierce Calvinistic tenets by which they were opposed. The 
former might have beguiled him into skepticism, the latter 
might have driven him into unbehef, if the necessary atten- 
tion to his professional studies, and an appetite for general 
knowledge, which found full employment for all leisure 
hours, had not happily prevented him from entering without 
a guide upon a field of inquiry, where he would either have 
been entangled among thorns, or beset with snares and pit- 
falls. 

True indeed it is, that nothing but the most injurious and 
inevitable circumstances could have corrupted his natural 
piety, for it had been fostered in him by his father's example, 
and by those domestic lessons which make upon us the 
deepest and most enduring impressions. But he was not 
armed, as it behooved him to be, against the errors of the age, 
neither those which, Uke the pestilence, walked in noonday, 
nor those which did their work insidiously, and in darkness. 

Methodism was then in its rampant stage ; the founders 
themselves had not yet sobered down ; and their followers, 
though more decent than the primitive Quakers, and far less 
offensive in their operations, ran, nevertheless, into extrava- 



172 THE DOCTOR. 

gances which made ill-judging magistrates slow in protect- 
ing them against the insults and outrages of the rabble. The 
dissenters were more engaged in controversy among them- 
selves than with the establishment; their old leaven had 
at that time no mass whereon to work, but it was care- 
fully preserved. The Nonjurors, of all sects (if they maybe 
called a sect) the most respectable in their origin, were al- 
most extinct. The Roman Catholics were quiet, in fear of 
the laws — no toleration being then professed for a church 
which proclaimed, and everywhere acted upon, the principle 
of absolute intolerance ; but there were few populous parts 
of the kingdom in which there was not some secular priest, 
or some regular, not indeed 

" Black, white, and gray with all their trumpery," 

for neither the uniform nor the trumpery were allowed, 
but monk, or friar, or Jesuit in lay clothing, employed in 
secretly administering to the then decreasing numbers of 
their own communion, and recruiting them whenever they 
safely could ; but more generally venturing no further than 
to insinuate doubts, and unsettle the belief, of unwary and 
unlearned members of the established religion, for this could 
always be done with impunity. And in this they aided, and 
were aided by, those who in that age were known by the 
name, which they had arrogated, to themselves, of free- 
thinkers. 

There was amongthe higher classes in those days a fashion 
of infidelity, imported from France; Shaftesbury and "the 
cankered B; lingbroke" (as Sir Robert Walpole used justly to 
call that profligate statesman) were beholden for their rep- 
utation more to this, than to any solidity of talents, or grace 
of style. It had made much less way in middl^^ life than in 
the higher and lower ranks ; for men in middle life, being 
generally trained up when children in the way they should 
go, were less likely to depart from it than those who were 
either above or below them in station ; indeed they were not 
exposed to the same dangers. The principles which were 
veiled but not disguised, by Lord Chesterfield and Horace 
Walpole, and exposed in their nakedness by Wilkes and his 
blasphemous associates at their orgies, were discussed in 
the Robin Hood Society, by men who were upon the same 
level with the holders-forth at the Rotunda in our own times, 
but who diff<-red from them in these respects, that they nei- 
ther made a trading profession of impiety, nor ventured into 
the treason line. 

Any man may graduate in the schools of irreligion and 
mispolicy, if he have a glib tongue and a brazen forehead; 
with these qualities, and a small portion of that talent which 
is producible on demand, he may take a wrangler's degree. 



THE DOCTOR. 173 

Such men were often met with in the common walks of so- 
ciety, before they became audacious enough to show them- 
selves upon the public theatre, and aspire to form a party in 
the state. Peter Hopkins could listen to them just with as 
much indifference as he did to a Jacobite, a Nonjuror, or one 
to whom the memory of Oliver and the saints in buff was 
precious. The doctor, before he happily became acquainted 
with Mr. Bacon, held his peace when in the presence of 
such people, but from a different cause : for though his heart 
rose against their discourse, and he had an instinctive assu- 
rance that it was equally pernicious and false, he had not so 
stored himself with needful knowledge as to be able to con- 
fute the commonplaces of an infidel propagandist. But it 
has an ill effect upon others, when a person of sounder judg- 
ment and more acquirements than themselves, remains silent 
in the company of such talkers ; for, from whatever motive 
his silence may proceed, it is likely to be considered, both 
by the assailants of the truth, and by the listeners, as an ad- 
mission o' his inability to maintain the better cause. Great 
evil has arisen to individuals, and to the community, from 
allowing scoffers to go unrebukedin private life ; and fallacies 
and falsehoods to pass uncontradicted and unexposed in those 
channels through which poison is conveyed to the public 
mind. 



CHAPTER XCVH. P. I. 

MR BACON*S PARSONAGE CHRISTIAN RESIGNATION — TIME AND 

CHANGE — WILKIE AND THE MONK IN THE ESCURIAL. 

The idea of her life shall sweetly creep 

Into his study of imagination ; 

And every lovely organ of her life 

Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit, 

More moving delicate, and full of life, 

Into the eye and prospect of his soul, 

Than when she hved indeed. 

Shakspeare. 

In a Scotch village the manse is sometimes the only good 
house, and generally it is the best ; almost, indeed, what in 
old times the mansion used to be in an English one. In Mr. 
Bacon's parish, the vicarage, though humble as the benefice 
itself, was the neatest. The cottage in which he and Mar- 
garet passed their childhood had been remarkable for that 
comfort which is the result and the reward of order and 
neatness : and when the reunion which blessed them both 
18 



174 THE DOCTOR, 

rendered the remembrance of those years delightful, they 
returned in this respect to the way in which they had been 
trained up, practised the economy which they had learned 
there, and loved to think how entirely their course of life, in 
all its circumstances, would be after the heart of that person, 
if she could behold it, whose memory they both with equal 
affection cherished. After his bereavement it was one of the 
widower's pensive pleasures to keep everything in the same 
state as when Margaret was living. Nothing was neglected 
that she used to do, or that she would have done. The 
flowers were tended as carefully as if she were still to enjoy 
their fragrance and their beauty ; and the birds who came in 
winter for their crumbs, were fed as duly for her sake, as 
they had formerly been by her hands. 

There was no superstition in this, nor weakness. Immod- 
erate grief, if it does not exhaust itself by indulgence, easily 
assumes the one character or the other, or takes a type of 
insanity. But he had looked for consolation where, when 
sincerely sought, it is always to be found ; and he had ex- 
perienced that religion effects in a true believer all that phi- 
losophy professes, and more than all that mere philosophy 
can perform. The wounds which stoicism would cauterize, 
religion heals. 

There is a resignation with which, it may be feared, most 
of us deceive ourselves. To bear what must be borne, and 
submit to what cannot be resisted, is no more than what 
the unregenerate heart is taught by the instinct of animal 
nature. But to acquiesce in the afflictive dispensations of 
Providence — to make one's own will conform in all things 
to that of our heavenly Father — to say to him in the sin- 
cerity of faith, when we drink of the bitter cup, " Thy will 
be done !" — to bless the name of the Lord as much from the 
heart when he takes away as when he gives, and with a 
depth of feeling of which perhaps none but the afflicted heart 
is capable — this is the resignation which religion teaches, 
this the sacrifice which it requires. This sacrifice Leon- 
ard had made, and he felt that it was accepted. 

Severe, therefore, as his loss had been, and lasting as its 
effects were, it produced in him nothing like a settled 
sorrow, nor even that melancholy which sorrow leaves be- 
hind. Gibbon has said of himself, that as a mere philosopher 
he could not agree with the Greeks, in thinking that those 
who die in their youth are favoured by the gods : o*' «*' ^"' 
(pi'Xovaiv aTToOvTitTKc veSg. It was bccausc he was " a mere philos- 
opher," that he failed to perceive a truth which the reli- 
gious heathen acknowledged, and which is so trivial, and of 
such practical value, that it may now be seen inscribed upon 
village tombstones. The Christian knows that " blessed 
are the dead which die in the Lord ; even so saith the Spirit." 
And the heart of the Christian mourner, in its deepest dis- 



THE DOCTOR. 175 

tress, hath the witness of the Spirit to that consolatory as- 
surance. 

In this faith Leonard regarded his bereavement. His loss, 
he knew, had been Margaret's gain. What if she had been 
summoned in the flower of her years, and from a state of con- 
nubial happiness which there had been nothing to disturb or 
to alloy % How soon might that flower have been blighted — 
how surely must it have faded ! how easily might that hap- 
piness have been interrupted by some of those evils which 
flesh is heir to I And as the separation was to take place, 
how mercifully had it been appointed that he, who was the 
stronger vessel, should be the surviver! Even for their 
child this was best, greatly as she needed, and would need, 
a mother's care. His paternal solicitude would supply that 
care, as far as it was possible to supply it ; but had he been 
removed, mother and child must have been left to the mercy 
of Providence, without any earthly protector, or any means 
of support. 

For her to die was gain ; in him, therefore, it were sinful 
as well as selfish to repine, and of such selfishness and sin 
his heart acquitted him. If a wish could have recalled her 
to life, no such wish would ever have by him been uttered, 
nor ever have by him been felt ; certain he was that he 
loved her too well to bring her again into this world of in- 
stability and trial. Upon earth there can be no safe happi- 
ness. 

Ah ! male Fortun^e devota est ara manenti ! 
Fallit, et haec nullas accipit ara preces.* 

All things here are subject to time and mutability : 

Quod tibi larga dedit Hora dextra. 
Hora furaci rapiet sinistra.! 

We must be in eternity before we can be secure against 
change. " The world," says Cowper, " upon which we close 
our eyes at night, is never the same with that on which we 
open them in the morning." 

It was to the perfect order he should find in that state 
upon which he was about to enter, that the judicious Hooker 
looked forward at his death with placid and profound con- 
tentment. Because he had been employed in contending 
against a spirit of insubordination and schism which soon 
proved fatal to his country ; and because his hfe had been 
passed under the perpetual discomfort of domestic discord, 
the happiness of Heaven seemed, in his estimation, to con- 
sist primarily in order, as indeed in all human societies this 
is the first thing needful. The discipline which Mr. Bacon 

* Wallius. t Casimir. 



176 THE DOCTOR. 

had undergone was very different in kind ; what he delighted 
to think, was, that the souls of those whom death and re- 
demption have made perfect, are in a world where there is 
no change, no parting, where nothing fades, nothing passes 
away and is no more seen, but the good and the beautiful 
are permanent. 

Miser, chi speme in cosa mortal pone ; 
Ma, chi non ve la pone '* 

When Wilkie was in the Escurial, looking at Titian^s 
famous picture of the Last Supper, in the refectory there, 
an old Jeronimite said to him, " I have sat daily in sight of 
that picture for now nearly threescore years: during that 
time my companions have dropped off, one after another, 
all who were my seniors, all who were my contemporaries, 
and many, or most of those who were younger than myself; 
more than one generation has passed away, and there the 
figures in the picture have remained unchanged ! I look at 
them till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and 
we but shadows !" 

I wish I could record the name of the monk by whom that 
natural feeling was so feelingly and strikingly expressed. 

" The shows of things are better than themselves," 

says the author of the tragedy of Nero, whose name, also, I 
could wish had been forthcoming ; and the classical reader 
will remember the lines of Sophocles : — 

Opw Y^P f)I^S.s ovSiv dvrai aWo, -irXriv 
•' "Et^wX', OaOLTTtp ^W;U£V, Tj kov<Pt]V OKidv.] 

These are reflections which should make us think 

Of that same time when no more change shall be, 

But steadfast rest of all things, firmly staid 

Upon the pillars of eternity, 

That is contraire to mutability ; 

For all that moveth doth in change delight : 

But thenceforth all shall rest eternally 

With him that is the God of Sabaoth hight. 

that great Sabaoth God grant me that sabbath's sight IJ 

♦ Petrarch. + Sophocles. t Spencer. 



THE DOCTOR. 



177 



CHAPTER XCVIII. P. I. 

CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION OPINIONS CONCERNING THE SPIRITS OF 

THE DEAD. 

The voice which I did more esteem 

Than music in her sweetest key ; 
Those eyes which unto me did seem 

More comfortable than the day ; 
Those now by me, as they have been, 
Shall never more be heard, or seen ; 
But what I once enjoyed in them, 
Shall seem hereafter as a dream. 

All earthly comforts vanish thus ; 

So little hold of them have we, 
That we from them, or they from us, 

May in a moment ravished be. 
yet we are neither just nor wise, 
If present mercies we despise ; 
Or mind not how there may be made 
A thankful use of what we had. 

Wither. 

There is a book written in Latin by the Flemish Jesuit 
Sarasa, upon the art of rejoicing always in obedience to the 
apostle's precept : " Ars semper gaudendi, demonstrata ex sola 
consideratione Divinae Providentiae." Leibnitz and Wolf have 
commended it ; and a French Protestant minister abridged 
it under the better title of " L'Art de se tranquiliser dans 
tous les evenemens de la vie." " I remember," says Cowper, 
" reading, many years ago, a long treatise on the subject of 
consolation, written in French ; the author's name I have 
forgotten ; but I wrote these words in the margin : ' Special 
consolation !' at least for a Frenchman, who is a creature the 
most easily comforted of any in the world !" It is not likely 
that this should have been the book which Leibnitz praised ; 
nor would Cowper have condemned one which recommends 
the mourner to seek for comfort, where alone it is to be 
found, in Tesignation to God's will, and in the prospect of the 
life to come. The remedy is infallible for those who, like 
Mr. Bacon, faithfully pursue the course that the only true 
philosophy prescribes. 

At first, indeed, he had felt like the bereaved maiden in 
Schiller's tragedy, and could almost have prayed, like her, for 
a speedy deliverance : — 



178 THE DOCTOR. 

Das Herz ist gestorben, die Welt ist leer, 
Und weiter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehi. 
Du Heiiige, rufe dein Kind zuriick ! 
Ich habe genossen das irdische Giiick, 
Ich habe gelebt und geliebet. 

But even at first the sense of parental duty withheld him 
from such a prayer. The grief, though " fine, full, perfect," 
was not a grief that 

violenteth in a sense as strong 
As that which causeth it.* 

There was this to compress, as it were, and perhaps to 
mitigate it, that it was wholly confined to himself, not mul- 
tiplied among others, and reflected from them. In great 
public calamities, when fortunes are wrecked in revolutionary 
storms, or families thinned or swept off by pestilence, there 
may be too many who look upon it as 

Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris ;t 

and this is not so much because 

fellowship in wo doth wo assuage,* 

flnd that 

the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip 
When grief hath mates and bearing fellowship,* 

as becafuse the presence of a fellow-sufferer at such times 
calls forth condolence, when that of one who continues in 
the sunshine of fortune might provoke an envious self-com- 
parison, which is the commonest of all evil feelings. But 
it is not so with those keener griefs which affect us in our 
domestic relations. The heart wounds which are inflicted 
by our fellow-creatures are apt to fester : those which we 
receive in the dispensations of Almighty wisdom and the 
course of nature, are remedial and sanative. There are 
some fruits which must be punctured before they can ripen 
kindly ; and there are some hearts which require an analo- 
gous process. 

He and Margaret had been all in all to each other, and the 
child was too young to understand her loss, and happily just 
too old to feel it as an infant would have felt it. In the sort 
of comfort which he derived from this sense of loneliness, 
there was nothing that resembled the pride of stoicism ; it 
was a consideration that tempered his feelings and assisted 

* Shakspeare. t Incerti Auctoris. 



THE DOCTOR. 179 

in enabling him to control them, but it concentrated and per- 
petuated them. 

Whether the souls of the departed are cognizant of what 
passes on earth, is a question which has been variously de- 
termined by those who have reasoned concerning the state 
of the dead. Thomas Burnet was of opinion that they are 
not, because they "rest from their labours." And South 
says, " it is clear that God sometimes takes his saints out of 
the world for this very cause, that they may not see and 
know what happens in it. For so says God to King Josiah, 
* Behold, 1 will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be 
gathered to thy grave in peace ; neither shall thy eyes see 
all the evil that I will bring upon this place, and the inhabit- 
ants thereof.' " This he adduces as a conclusive argument 
against the the invocation of saints, saying the "discourse 
would have been hugely absurd and inconsequent, if so be 
the saints separation from the body gave them a fuller and 
a clearer prospect into all the particular affairs and occur- 
rences that happen here upon earth." 

Aristotle came to an opposite conclusion ; he thought not 
only that the works of the deceased follow them, but that 
the dead are sensible of the earthly consequences of those 
works, and are affected in the other world by the honour or 
the reproach which is justly ascribed to their memory in this. 
So Pindar represents it as one of the enjoyments of the 
blessed, that they behold and rejoice in the virtues of their 
posterity : — 

"Effrt Se Kai ri davivTcooiv fxipog 

Kavv^/jiov spS<!>iJL£vov, 
KaraKpvTTTei 6' ov Kovig 
"Evyydvuiv KtSvdv xaptv.* 

So Sextus, or Sextius, the Pythagorean, taught : " Tmmor- 
tales crede te manere injudicio honores et pcznas.'''' And Bishop 
Ken deemed it would be an addition to his happiness in para- 
dise, if he should, know that his devotional poems were 
answering on earth the purpose for which he had piously 
composed them : — 

should the well-meant songs 1 leave behind 
With Jesus' lovers an acceptance find, 
'Twill heighten even the joys of heaven to know 
That in my verse the saints hymn God below. 

The consensus gentium universalis is with the philosophers 
and the bishop against South and Burnet : it affords an argu- 
ment which South would not have disregarded, and to which 
Burnet has, on another occasion, triumphantly appealed. 

* Pindar. 



180 THE DOCTOR. 

All sacrifices to the dead, and all commemorations of them, 
have arisen from this opinion, and the Romish church estab- 
lished upon it the most lucrative of all its deceitful prac- 
tices. Indeed, the belief in apparitions could not prevail 
without it; and that belief, which was all but universal a 
century ago, is still, and ever will be held by the great major- 
ity of mankind. Call it a prejudice if you will: ''What is 
a universal prejudice," says Reginald Heber, "but the voice 
of human nature?" And Shakspeare seems to express his 
own opinion when he writes, " They say miracles are past ; 
and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and 
familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence it is that 
we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming 
knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown 
fear." 

That the spirits of the departed are permitted to appear 
only for special purposes, is what the most credulous believer 
in such appearances would probably admit, if he reasoned at 
all on the subject. On the other hand, they who are most 
incredulous on this point would hardly deny that to witness 
the consequences of our actions may be a natural and just 
part of our reward or punishment in the intermediate state. 
We may well believe that they whom faith has sanctified, 
and who upon their departure join the spirits of the "just 
made perfect," may at once be removed from all concern 
with this world of probation, except so far as might add to 
their own happiness, and be made conducive to the good of 
others, in the ways of Providence. But, by parity of rea- 
son, it may be concluded that the sordid and the sensual, 
they whose affections have been set upon worldly things, and 
who are of the earth earthy, will be as unable to rise above 
this earth as they would be incapable of any pure and spiritual 
enjoyment. " He that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh 
reap corruption." When life is extinguished, it is too late 
for them to struggle for deliverance from the body of that 
death, to which, while the choice was in their power, they 
wilfully and inseparably bound themselves. The popular 
behef that places are haunted where money has been con- 
cealed, (asif wh-ere the treasure was and the heart had been, 
there would the miserable soul be also,) or where some great 
and undiscovered crime has been committed, shows how 
consistent this is with our natural sense of likelihood and 
fitness. 

There is a tale in the Nigaristan of Kemal-Pasha-zade, 
that one of the sultans of Khorassan saw in a dream Mah- 
moud, a hundred years after his death, wandering about his 
pai.ace — his flesh rotten, his bones carious, but his eyes fuU, 
anxious, and restless, A dervise who interpreted the dream 
said the eyes of Mahmoud were thus troubled, because the 



THE DOCTOR. 181 

kingdom, his beautiful spouse, was now in the embrace of 
another. 

This was that great Mahmoud the Gaznevide, who was the 
first Mohammedan conqueror that entered India, and the first 
who dropped the title of malek and assumed that of sultan in its 
stead. He it was who, after having broken to pieces with his 
own hands the gigantic idol of Soumenat, put to death fifty- 
thousand of its worshippers as a further proof of his holy Mo- 
hammedan indignation. In the last days of his life, when a 
mortal disease was consuming him, and he himself knew that 
no human means could arrest its course, he ordered all his 
costliest apparel, and his vessels of silver and gold, and his 
pearls and precious stones, the inestimable spoils of the East, 
to be displayed before him. The latter were so numerous that 
they were arranged in separate cabinets according to their 
colour and size. It was in the royal residence which he 
had built for himself in Gazna, and which he called the Pal- 
ace of Felicity, that he took from this display, wherewith he 
had formerly gratified the pride of his eye, a mournful les- 
son ; and in the then heartfelt conviction that all is vanity, 
he wept hke a child. " What toils," said he, " what dan- 
gers, what fatigues of body and mind, have I endured for the 
sake of acquiring these treasures, and what cares in preserv- 
ing them, and now I am about to die and leave them !" In 
this same palace he was interred, and there it was that his 
unhappy ghost, a century afterward, was believed to wander. 



CHAPTER XCIX. P. I. 

A COUNTRY PARISH — SOME WHOLESOME EXTRACTS, SOME TRUE 
ANECDOTES, AND SOME USEFUL HINTS, WHICH WILL NOT BE 
TAKEN BY THOSE WHO NEED THEM MOST. 

Non e inconveniente, che dellecose delettabili alcune ne sienoutili, cosi 
come dell' utili molte ne sorio delettabili, et in tutte due alcunp si truo- 
vano honeste. — Leone Medico (Hebreo.) 

Mr. Bacon's parsonage was as humble a dwelling in all 
respects as the cottage in which his friend Daniel was born. 
A best kitchen was its best room, and in its furniture an Ob- 
servantine friar would have seen nothing that he could have 
condemned as superfluous. His college and later school 
books, with a few volumes wliich had been presented to him by 
the more grateful of his pupils, composed his scanty library : 
they were either books of needful reference, or such as upon 
every fresh perusal might afford new delight. But he had 
18* 



182 THE DOCTOR. 

obtained the use of the church library at Doncaster, by a 
payment of twenty shillings, according to the terms of the 
foundation. Folios from that collection might be kept three 
months, smaller volumes one or two, according to their size ; 
and as there were many works in it of solid contents as well 
as of sterling value, he was in no such want of intellectual 
food as too many of his brethren are, even at this time. How 
much good might have been done, and how much evil might 
probably have been prevented, if Dr. Bray's design for the 
formation of parochial libraries had been everywhere carried 
into effect ! 

The parish contained between five and six hundred souls. 
There was no one of higher rank among them than entitled 
him, according to the custom of those days, to be styled gen- 
tleman upon his tombstone. They were plain people, who 
had neither manufactories to corrupt, alehouses to brutalize, 
nor newspapers to mislead them. At first coming among 
them he had won their good will by his affability and benign 
conduct, and he had afterward gained their respect and affec- 
tion in an equal degree. 

There were two services at his church, but only one ser- 
mon, which never fell short of fifteen minutes in length, and 
seldom extended to half an hour. It was generally abridged 
from some good old divine. His own compositions were 
few, and only upon points on which he wished carefully to 
examine and digest his own thoughts, or which were pecu- 
liarly suited to some or other of his hearers. His whole 
stock might be deemed scanty in these days ; but there was 
not one in it which would not well bear repetition, and the 
more observant of his congregation liked that they should be 
repeated. 

Young ministers are earnestly advised long to refrain from 
preaching their own productions, in an excellent little book 
addressed by a father to his son, preparatory to his receiving 
holy orders. Its title is a " Monitor for Young Ministers ;" 
and every parent who has a son so circumstanced, would do 
well to put it into his hands. " It is not possible," says this 
judicious writer, " that a young minister can at first be com- 
petent to preach his sermons with effect, even if his abilities 
should qualify him to write well. His very youth and youth- 
ful manner, both in his style of writing and in his delivery, 
will preclude him from being effective. Unquestionably it is 
very rare indeed for a man of his age to have his mental abili- 
ties sufficiently chastened, or his method sufficiently settled, to 
be equal to the composition of a sermon fit for public use, even 
if it should receive the advantage of a chaste and good deliv- 
ery. On every account, therefore, it is wise and prudent to be 
slow and backward in venturing to produce his own efforts, 
or in thinking that they are fit for the pubhc ear. There is 
an abundant field of the works of others open to him, from 



THE DOCTOR. 183 

the wisest and the best of men, the weight of whose little fin- 
gers, in argument or instruction, will be greater than his own 
loins, even at his highest maturity. There is clearly no 
want of new compositions, excepting on some new or occa- 
sional emergencies : for there is not an open subject in the 
Christian religion, which has not been discussed by men of 
the greatest learning and piety — who have left behind them 
numerous works for our assistance and edification. Many of 
these are so neglected, that they are become almost new 
ground for our generation. To these he may freely resort — 
till experience and a rational and chastened confidence shall 
warrant him in believing himself quahfied to work upon his 
own resources." 

" He that learns of young men," says Rabbi Jose Bar Je- 
hudah, " is like a man that eats unripe grapes, or that drinks 
wine out of the winepress ; but he that learneth of the an- 
cient, is like a man that eateth ripe grapes, and drinketh 
wine that is old."* 

It was not in pursuance of any judicious advice like this, that 
Mr. Bacon followed the course here pointed out, but from his 
own good sense and natural humility. His only ambition was 
to be useful ; if a desire may be called ambitious which origina- 
ted in the sincere sense of duty. To think of distinguishing 
himself in any other way, would for him, he well knew, have 
been worse than an idle dream. The time expended in com- 
posing a sermon as a perfunctory official business, would 
have been worse than wasted for himself, and the time em- 
ployed in delivering it, no better than wasted upon his con- 
gregation. He was especially careful never to weary them, 
and therefore never to preach anything which was not likely 
to engage their attention, and make at least some present im- 
pression. His own sermons effected this, because they were 
always composed with some immediate view, or under the 
influence of some deep and strong feeling : and in his adopted 
ones, the different manner of the different authors produced 
an awakening effect. Good sense is as often to be found 
among the illiterate, as among those who have enjoyed the 
opportunities of education. Many of his hearers who knew 
but one meaning of the word stile, and had never heard it 
used in any other, perceived a difference in the manner of 
Bishops Hall, and Sanderson, and Jeremy Taylor, of Bar- 
row, and South, and Scott, without troubhng themselves 
about the cause, or being in the slightest degree aware 
of it. 

Mr. Bacon neither undervalued his parishioners, nor over- 
valued the good which could be wrought among them by di- 
rect instruction of this kind. While he used perspicuous 
language, he knew that those who listened to it would be 

* Lightfoot. 



184 THE DOCTOR. 

able to follow the argument ; and as he drew always from 
the wells of English undefiled, he was safe on that point. 
But that all even of the adults would listen, and that all even 
of those who did, would do anything more than hear, he was 
too well acquainted with human nature to expect. 

A woman in humble life was asked one day on the way 
back from church, whether she had understood the sermon; 
a stranger had preached, and his discourse resembled one of 
Mr. Bacon's neither in length nor depth. " VVud I hae the 
persumption V was her simple and contented answer. The 
quality of the discourse signified nothing to her; she had 
done her duty, as well as she could, in hearing it ; and she 
went to her house justified rather than some of those who 
had attended to it critically ; or who had turned to the text 
in their Bibles, when it was given out. 

"Well, Master Jackson," said his minister, walking home- 
ward after service, with an industrious labourer, who was a 
constant attendant — " well, Master Jackson, Sunday must be 
a blessed day of rest for you, who work so hard all the week ! 
And you make a good use of the day, for you are always to 
be seen at church !" " Ay, sir," replied Jackson, " it is in- 
deed a blessed day ; I works hard enough all the week ; and 
then I comes to church o' Sundays, and sets me down, and 
lays my legs up, and thinks o' nothing." 

" Let my candle go out in a stink, when I refuse to confess 
from whom I have lighted it."* The author to whose little 
bookf I am beholden for this true anecdote, after saying 
" Such was the religion of this worthy man," justly adds, 
" and such must be the religion of most men of his station. 
Doubtless, it is a wise dispensation that it is so. For so it 
has been from the beginning of the world, and there is no 
visible reason to suppose that it can ever be otherwise." 

" In spite," says this judicious writer, " of all the zealous 
wishes and efforts of the most pious and laborious teachers, 
the religion of the bulk of the people must and will ever be 
little more than mere habit, and confidence in others. This 
must of necessity be the case with all men, who from defect 
of nature or education, or from other worldly causes, have 
not the power or the disposition to think ; and it cannot be 
disputed that the far greater number of mankind are of this 
class. These facts give peculiar force to those lessons which 
teach the importance and efficacy of good example from 
those who are blessed with higher qualifications ; and they 
strongly demonstrate the necessity that the zeal of those 
who wish to impress the people with the deep and awful 
mysteries of religion, should be tempered by wisdom and 
discretion, no less than by patience, forbearance, and a great 

* Fuller. t Few Words on many Subjects. 



THE DOCTOR. 185 

latitude of indulgence for uncontrollable circumstances. 
They also call upon us most powerfully to do all we can'to 
provide such teachers, and imbue them with such principles 
as shall not endanger the good cause by over earnest efforts 
to effect more than, in the nature of things, can be done ; or 
disturb the existing good by attempting more than will be 
borne, or by producing hypocritical pretences of more than 
can be really felt." 



CHAPTER C. P. I. 

SHOWING HOW THE VICAR DEALT WITH THE JUVENILE PART OP 
HIS flock; and how he WAS OF OPINION THAT THE MORE 
PLEASANT THE WAY IN WHICH CHILDREN ARE TRAINED UP TO 
GO CAN BE MADE FOR THEM, THE LESS LIKELY THEY WILL 
BE TO DEPART FROM IT. 

Sweet were the sauce would please each kind of taste, 
The life, likewise, were pure that never swerved ; 

For spiteful tongues, in cankered stomachs placed, 
Deem worst of things which best, percase, deserved. 

But what for that? This med'cine may suffice, 

To scorn the rest, and seek to please the wise. 

Sir Walter Raleigh. 

The first thing which Mr. Bacon had done after taking 
possession of his vicarage, and obtaining such information 
about his parishioners as the more considerate of them could 
impart, was to inquire into the state of the children in every 
household. He knew that to win the mother's good will 
was the surest way to win that of the family, and to win 
the children was a good step towards gaining that of the mo- 
ther. In those days reading and writing were thought as 
little necessary for the lower class, as the art of spelling for 
the class above them, or indeed for any except the learned. 
Their ignorance in this respect was sometimes found to be 
inconvenient, but by none, perhaps, except here and there 
by a conscientious and thoughtful clergyman, was it felt to 
be an evil, an impediment in the way of that moral and reli- 
gious instruction, without which men are in danger of be- 
coming as the beasts that perish. Yet the common wish of 
advancing their children in the world, made most parents in 
this station desire to obtain the advantage of what they 
called book learnmg lor any son who was supposed to mani- 
fest a disposition likely to profit by it. To make him a 
scholar was to raise him a step above themselves. 



186 THE DOCTOR. 

Qui ha les lettres, ha I'adresse 
• Au double d'un qui n'en ha point.* 

Partly for this reason, and still more that industrious mothers 
might be relieved from the care of looking after their chil- 
dren, there were few villages m which, as in Mr. Bacon's 
parish, some poor woman in the decline of life and of for- 
tune did not obtain day scholars enough to eke out her 
scanty means of subsistence. 

The village schoolmistress, such as Shenstone describes 
in his admirable poem, and such as Kirke White drew from 
the life, is no longer a living character. The new system 
of education has taken from this class of women the staff of 
their declining age, as the spinning jennies have silenced the 
domestic music of the spinning wheel. Both changes have 
come on unavoidably in the progress of human affairs. It 
is well when any change brings with it nothing worse than 
some temporary and incidental evil ; but if the moral ma- 
chinery can counteract the great and growing evils of the 
manufacturing system, it will be the greatest moral miracle 
that has ever been wrought. 

Sunday schools, which make Sunday a day of toil to the 
teachers, and the most irksome day of the week to the chil- 
dren, had not at that time been devised as a palliative for the 
profligacy of large towns, and the worsened and worsening 
condition of the poor. Mr. Bacon endeavoured to make the 
parents perform their religious duty towards their children, 
either by teaching them what they could themselves teach, 
or by sending them where their own want of knowledge 
might be supplied. Whether the children went to school or 
not, it was his wish that they should be taught their prayers, 
the creed, and the commandments, at home. These he 
thought were better learned at the mothers' knees than from 
any other teacher ; and he knew also how wholesome for 
the mother it was that the child should receive from her its 
first spiritual food, the milk of sound doctrine. In a purely 
agricultural parish, there were at that time no parents in a 
state of such brutal ignorance as to be unable to teach these, 
though they might never have been taught to read. When 
the father or mother could read, he expected that they should 
also teach their children the catechism ; in other cases this 
was left to his humble coadjutrix the schoolmistress. 

During the summer and part of the autumn, he followed the 
good old usage of catechizing the children, after the second 
lesson in the evening service. His method was to ask a few 
questions in succession, and only from those who he knew 
were able to answer them ; and after each answer he entered 
into a brief exposition suited to their capacity. His manner 

»Baif 



THE DOCTOR. 187 

was so benevolent, and he had made himself so familiar in 
his visits, w^hich were at once pastoral and friendly, that no 
child felt alarmed at being singled out ; they regarded it as a 
mark of distinction, and the parents were proud of seeing 
them thus distinguished. This practice was discontinued in 
winter ; because he knew that to keep a congregation in the 
cold is not the way either to quicken or cherish devotional 
feeling. Once a week during lent he examined all the chil- 
dren, on a week day ; the last examination was in Easter 
week, after which each was sent home happy with a homely 
cake, the gift of a wealthy parishioner, who by this means 
contributed not a little to the good effect of the pastor's dil- 
igence. 

The foundation was thus laid by teaching the rising gen- 
eration their duty towards God and towards their neighbour, 
and so far training them in the way they should go. In the 
course of a few years every household, from the highest to 
the lowest, (the degrees were neither great nor many,) had 
learned to look upon him as their friend. There was only one 
in the parish whose members were upon a parity with him in 
manners, none in literary culture ; but in good will, and in 
human sympathy, he was upon a level with them all. Never 
interfering in the concerns of any family, unless his interfer- 
ence was solicited, he was consulted upon all occasions of 
trouble or importance. Incipient disputes, which would 
otherwise have afforded grist for the lawyer's mill, were ad- 
justed by his mediation; and anxious parents, when they 
had cause to apprehend that their children were going wrong, 
knew no better course than to communicate their fears to 
him, and request that he would administer some timel)?^ ad- 
monition. Whenever he was thus called on, or had of him- 
self perceived that reproof or warning was required, it was 
given in private, or only in presence of the parents, and al- 
ways with a gentleness which none but an obdurate disposi- 
tion could resist. His influence over the younger part of his 
flock was the greater because he was no enemy to any inno- 
cent sports, but on the contrary was pleased to see them 
dance round the maypole, encouraged them to dress their 
doors with oaken boughs on the day of King Charles's happy 
restoration, and to wear an oaken garland in the hat, or an 
oak apple on its sprig in the buttonhole^; went to see their 
bonfire on the fifth of November, and entertained the morris 
dancers when they called upon him in their Christmas rounds. 

Mr. Bacon was in his parish what a moralizing old poet 
wished himself to be, in these pleasing stanzas : — 



I would I were an excellent divine, 
That had the Bible at my fingers' ends, 

That men might hear out of this mouth of mine 
How God doth make his enemies his firiends ; 



188 THE DOCTOR. 

Rather than with a thundering and long prayer 
Be led into presumption, or despair. 

This would I be, and would none other be, 
But a religious servant of my God : 

And know there is none other God but he, 
And willingly to suffer mercy's rod, 

Joy in his grace, and live but in his love. 

And seek my bliss but in the world above. 

And I would frame a kind of faithful prayer 
For all estates within the state of grace : 

That careful love might never know despair, 
Nor servile fear might faithful love deface ; 

And this would I both day and night devise 

To make my humble spirits exercise. 

And I would read the rules of sacred life. 
Persuade the troubled soul to patience. 

The husband care, and comfort to the wife, 
To child and servant due obedience, 

Faith to the friend, and to the neighbour peace, 

That love might hve, and quarrels all might cease ; 

Pray for the health of all that are diseased, 
Confession unto all that are convicted. 

And patience unto all that are displeased, 
And comfort unto all that are afflicted. 

And mercy unto all that have offended, 

And grace to all, that all may be amended.* 



CHAPTER CI. P. I. 

SOME ACCOUNT OF A RETIRED TOBACCONIST AND HIS FAMILY. 

Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem. 

Horace. 

In all Mr. Bacon's views he was fortunate enough to have 
the hearty concurrence of the wealthiest person in the parish. 
This was a good man, Allison by name, who having realized 
a respectable fortune in the metropolis as a tobacconist, and 
put out his sons in life according to their respective inclina- 
tions, had retired from business at the age of threescore, and 
established himself with an unmarried daughter, and a maiden 
sister some ten years younger than himself, in his native 
village, that he might there, when his hour should come, be 
gathered to his fathers. 

" The providence of God,'' says South, " has so ordered 

* N. B., supposed to be Nicholas Breton. 



THE DOCTOR. 189 

the course of things, that there is no action the usefulness 
of which has made it the matter of duty and of a profession, 
but a man may bear the continual pursuit of it, without loath- 
ing or satiety. The same shop and trade that employs a 
man in his youth, employs him also in his age. Every 
morning he rises fresh to his hammer and his anvil : custom 
has naturalized his labour to him ; his shop is his element, 
and he cannot with any enjoyment of himself live out of it." 
The great preacher contrasts this with the wearisomeness 
of an idle life, and the misery of a continual round of what 
the world calls pleasure. " But now," says he, " if God has 
interwoven such a contentment with the works of our ordi- 
nary calling, how much superior and more refined must that 
be that arises from the survey of a pious and well-governed 
life." 

This passage bears upon Mr. Allison's case, partly in the 
consolatory fact which it states, and wholly in the applica- 
tion which South has made of it. At the age of fourteen he 
had been apprenticed to an uncle in Bishopsgate-street- 
within ; and twenty years after, on that uncle's death, had 
succeeded to his old and well established business. But 
though he had lived there prosperously and happily six-and- 
twenty years longer, he had contracted no such love for it 
as to overcome the recollections of his childhood. Grateful 
as the smell of snuflf and tobacco had become to him, he still 
remembered that cowslips and violets were sweeter; and 
that the breath of a May morning was more exhilarating than 
the air of his own shop, impregnated as it was with the 
odour of the best Virginia. So, having buried his wife, who 
was a Londoner, and made over the business to his eldest 
son, he returned to his native place, with the intention of 
dying there ; but he was in sound health of body and mind, 
and his green old age seemed to promise — as far as anything 
can promise — length of days. 

Of his two other sons, one had chosen to be a clergyman, 
and approved his choice both by his parts and diligence, for 
he had gone off from Merchant Taylors' School to St. John's, 
Oxford, and was then a fellow of that college. The other 
was a mate in the merchants' service, and would soon have 
the command of a ship in it. The desire of seeing the world 
led him to this way of life ; and that desire had been unin- 
tentionally implanted by his father, who, in making himself 
acquainted with everything relating to the herb out of which 
his own fortune was raised, had become fond of reading voy- 
ages and travels. His conversation induced the lad to read 
these books, and the books confirmed the inclination which 
had already been excited ; and as the boy was of an adven- 
turous temper, he thought it best to let him follow the pur- 
suit on which his mind was bent. 
The change to a Yorkshire village was not too great for 



190 THE DOCTOR. 

Mr. Allison, even after residing nearly half a century in 
Bisliopsgate-street-within. The change in his own house- 
hold, indeed, rendered it expedient for him to begin, in this 
sense, a new life. He had lost his mate ; the young birds 
were full-fledged and had taken flight ; and it was time that 
he should look out a retreat for himself and the single nest- 
ling that remained under his wing, now that his son and suc- 
cessor had brought home a wife. The marriage had been 
altogether with his approbation ; but it altered his position 
in the house, and in a still greater degree his sister's ; more- 
over, the nest would soon be wanted for another brood. 
Circumstances thus compelled him to put in eff'ect what had 
been the dream of his youth, and the still remote intention 
(if his middle age. 

Miss Allison, like her brother, regarded this removal as a 
great and serious change, preparatory to the only greater 
one in this world that now remained for both; but like him 
she regarded it rather seriously than sadly, or sadly only in 
the old sober meaning of the word ; and there was a soft, 
sweet evening sunshine in their prospect, which both par- 
took, because both had retained a deep affection for the 
scenes of their childhood. To Betsey, her niece, nothing 
could be more delightful than the expectation of such a re- 
moval. She, who was then only entering her teens, had 
nothing to regret in leaving London ; and the place to which 
she was going was the very spot which, of all others in this 
wide world, from the time in which she was conscious of 
forming a wish, she had wished most to see. Her brother, 
the sailor, was not more taken with the story of Pocahontas 
and Captain Smith, or Dampier's Voyages, than she was 
with her aunt's details of the farm and the dairy at Thaxted 
Grange, the May games and the Christmas gambols, the days 
that were gone, and the elders who were departed. To one 
born and bred in the heart of London, who had scarcely ever 
seen a flock of sheep, except when they were driven through 
the streets, to or from Smithfield, no fairy tale could present 
more for the imagination than a description of green fields 
and rural life. The charm of truth heightened it, and the 
stronger charm of natural piety ; for the personages of the 
tale were her near kin, whose names she had learned to love, 
and whose living memory she revered, but whose counte- 
nances she never could behold till she should be welcomed 
by them in the everlasting mansions of the righteous. 

None of the party were disappointed when they had es- 
tablished themselves at the Grange. Mr. Allison found full 
occupation at first in improving the house, and afterward in 
his fields and garden. Mr. Bacon was just such a clergyman 
as he would have chosen for his parish priest if it had been 
in his power to choose, only he would have had hira provided 
with a better benefice. The single thing on which there 



THE DOCTOR. 191 

was a want of agreement between them was, that the vicar 
neither smoked nor took snuff; he was not the worse com- 
pany on this account, for he had no dislike to the fragrance 
of a pipe ; but his neighbour lost the pleasure which he would 
have had in supplying him with the best pigtail, and with 
Strasburg or rappee. Miss Allison fell into the habits of 
her new station the more easily, because they were those 
which she had witnessed in her early youth ; she distilled 
waters, dried herbs, and prepared conserves — which were at 
the service of all who needed them in sickness. Betsey 
attached herself at first sight to Deborah, who was about five 
years elder, and soon became to her as a sister. The aunt 
rejoiced in finding so suitable a friend and companion for 
her niece ; and as this connection was a pleasure and an 
advantage to the Allisons, so was it of the greatest benefit 
to Deborah. 

What of her ensues 
I hst not prophecy, but let time's news 
Be known, when 'tis brought forth. Of this allow 
If ever you have spent time worse ere now ; 
If never yet, the author then doth say 
He wishes earnestly you never may.* 



INTERCHAPTER XI. P. I. 

ADVICE TO CERTAIN READERS INTENDED TO ASSIST THEIR DIGES* 
TION OF THESE VOLUMES. 

Take this in good part, vrhatsoever thou be, 
And wish me no worse than I wish unto thee. 

TUSSER. 

The wisest of men hath told us that there is a time for 
everything. I have been considering what time is fittest 
for studying this elaborate opus^ so as best to profit by its 
recondite stores of instruction, as the great chronicler of 
Garagantua says, " avec espoir certain d'acquerrir moult 
prudence et preud 'hommie a la ditte lecture, la quelle vous 
relevera de tres-hauts sacrements et mysteres horrifiques." 

The judicious reader must ere this have perceived that 
this work, to use the happy expression of the Demoiselle de 
Gourney, is, " edifie de telle sort que les mots et la matierf 
sent consubstantiels." In one sense indeed it is 

Meet for all hours and every mood of man;* 

* Shakspeare. t Dr. Butt. 



192 THE DOCTOR. 

but all hours are not equally meet for it. For it is not like 
Sir Walter Scott's novels, fit for men, women, and children, 
at morning-, noon, or night, summer and winter, and every 
day, among all sorts of people — Sundays excepted with the 
religious public. Equally sweet in the mouth it may be to 
some ; but it will not be found equally light of digestion. 

Whether it should be taken upon an empty stomach, must 
depend upon the constitution of the reader. If he is of that 
happy complexion that he awakes in the morning with his 
spirits elastic as the air, fresh as the dawn, and joyous as 
the sky lark, let him by all means read a chapter before 
breakfast. It will be a carminative, a cordial for the day. 
If on the contrary his faculties continue to feel the influence 
of the leaden sceptre till breakfast has resuscitated them, I 
advise him not to open the book before the stomach has 
been propitiated by a morning offering. 

Breakfast will bathe best time for bachelors, and especial- 
ly for lawyers. They will find it excellent to prime with. 

I do not recommend it at night. Rather, indeed, I caution 
the reader against indulging in it at that time. Its effect 
might be injurious, for it would counteract the genial ten- 
dency to repose which ought then to be encouraged. There- 
fore when the hour of sleep approaches, lay this book aside, 
and read four pages upon political economy — it matters not 
in what author, though the Scotch are to be preferred. 

Except at night, it may be perused at any time by those 
who have the mens sana in corpore sano ; those who fear God, 
honour the king, love their country and their kind, do their 
duty to their neighbours, and live in the performance and 
enjoyment of the domestic charities. 

It will be an excellent Saturday book for Rowland Hill ; 
his sermon will be pleasanter for it next day. 

The book is good for valetudinarians, and may even be 
recommended in aid of Abernethy's blue pill. But I do not 
advise it with water gruel or sago ; hardly with chicken 
broth, calfs foot jelly, or beef tea. It accords well with a 
course of tonics. But a convalescent will find it best with 
his first beef steak and glass of wine. 

The case is different for those who have either a twist m 
the head or a morbid affection about the pericardium. 

If Grey Bennet will read it, (from which I dehort him,) 
he should prepare by taking the following medicine to purge 
choler : 

J]c. Extract : Colocynth : Comp : gr. x. 
Calomel : gr. v. 

Syr : q. s. f. Massa in pilulas iij. dividenda. Sumat pilulas IIJ nora 
somni. 

It will do Lord Hollard no harm. 

Lord John Russel is recommended to use sage tea with it. 



THE DOCTOR. 193 

If this operate as an alterative, it may save him from taking 
oil of rue hereafter in powerful closes. 

For Mr. Brougham, a strong decoction of the herb lunaria 
will be needful : a plant " elegantly so named by the elder 
botanists, and by all succeeding ones, from luna, the moon, 
on account of the silvery semi-transparent aspect, and broad 
circular shape of its seed vessels." Honesty, or satinjiower, 
are its trivial names. It is recommended in this case not 
so much for the cephalic properties which its Liiinean ap- 
pellation might seem to denote, as for its emollient and 
purifying virtue. 

The lord chancellor must never read it in his wig. Dr. 
Parr, never without it. 

Mr. Wilberforce may dip into it when he will. At all 
times it will find him in good humour, and in charity with all 
men. Nay, if I whisper to him that it will be no sin to allow 
himself a few pages on a Sunday, and that if the preacher 
under whom he has been sitting, should have given his 
discourse a strong spice of Calvinism, it may then be useful 
to have recourse to it ; though he should be shocked at the 
wholesome hint, the worst thing he will say of the incogni- 
zable incognito from whom it comes, will be Poo-oo-oo-r 
cree-ee-eature ! shaking his head, and lowering it at the 
same time till his forehead almost touches the table, and his 
voice, gradually quickening in speed and sinking in tone, 
dies away to a whisper, in a manner which may thus be 
represented in types : 

Poo-oo-oo-oo-r Creeeature 

Pooo-oo-oo-oo-r Creeeature 

Poo-oo-oo-oo-r Creature 

Poo-oo-oo-r Creature 

Pooo-oo-r Creature 

Poooor Creature 

Pooor Creature 

Poor Creature 

Poor Cretur 

PoorCretur 

Poor Crtiit 

PooCrtr 

FoCrt 



194 THE DOCTOR. 



CHAPTER CII. P. I. 

MORE CONCERNING THE AFORESAID TOBACCONIST. 

I doubt notliing at all but that you shall like the man every day better 
than other ; for verily I think he lacketh not of those qualities which should 
become any honest man to have, over and besides the gift of nature where 
with God hath above the common rate endued him. — Archbishop Ckan- 

MER. 

Mr. Allison was as quiet a subject as Peter Hopkins, but 
he was not like him a political quietist from indifference, for 
he had a warm sense of loyalty, and a well-rooted attach- 
ment to the constitution of his country, in church and state. 
His ancestors had suffered in the great rebellion, and much 
the greater part of their never large estates had been alien- 
ated to raise the fines imposed upon them as dehnquents. 
The uncle whom he succeeded in Bishopsgate-street, had, in 
his early apprenticeship, assisted at burning the Rump, and, 
in maturer years, had joined as heartily in the rejoicings, 
when the seven bishops were released from the Tower ; he 
subscribed to Walker's " Account of the Sufferings of the 
Clergy," and had heard sermons preached b}" the famous Dr. 
Scott, (which were afterward incorporated in his great 
work upon the Christian Life,) in the church of St. Peter le 
Poor; (oddly so called, seeing that there are few districts 
within the city of London so rich, insomuch that the last 
historian of the metropolis believed the parish to have 
scarcely a poor family in it ;) and in All-hallows, Lombard- 
street, where, during the reign of the godly, the Puritanical 
vestry passed a resolution that if any persons should come to 
the church " on the day called Christ's birthday," they should 
be compelled to leave it. 

In these principles, Mr. AUison had grown up ; and with- 
out any profession of extra religion, or ever wearing a sanc- 
tified face, he had in the evening of his life attained " the 
end of the commandment, which is charity, proceeding from 
a pure heart, and a good conscience, and a faith unfeigned." 
London, in his days, was a better school for young men in 
trade than it ever was before, or has been since. The civic 
power had quietly and imperceptibly put an end to that club 
law, which once made the apprentices a turbulent and formi- 
dable body, at any moment armed as well as ready for a riot ; 
and masters exercised a sort of parental control over the 
youth intrusted to them, which in later times, it may be 
feared, has not been so conscientiously exerted, because it is 



THE DOCTOR. 195 

not likely to be so patiently endured. Trade itseJf had not 
then been corrupted by that ruinous spirit of competition, 
which, more than any other of the evils now pressing upon 
us, deserves to be called the curse of England in the present 
age. At all times men have been to be found, who engaged 
in hazardous speculations, gamesterlike, according to their 
opportunities, or who, mistaking the means for the end, de- 
voted themselves with miserable fidelity to the service of 
Mammon. But " Live and let hve," had not yet become a 
maxim of obsolete morality. We had our monarchy, our 
hierarchy, and our aristocracy — God be praised for the bene- 
fits which have been derived from all three, and God in his 
mercy continue them to us ! but we had no plutarchy, no 
millionaries, no great capitalists to break down the honest 
and industrious trader, with the weight of their overbearing 
and overwhelming wealth. They who had enriched them- 
selves in the course of regular and honourable commerce, 
withdrew from business, and left the field to others. Feudal 
tyranny had passed away, and moneyed tyranny had not yet 
arisen in its stead — a tyranny baser in its origin, not more 
merciful in its operations, and with less in its appendages to 
redeem it. 

Trade, in Mr. Allison's days, was a school of thrift and pro- 
bity, as much as of profit and loss ; such his shop had been 
when he succeeded to it upon his uncle's decease, and such 
it continued to be when he transmitted it to his son. Old 
Mr. Strahan the printer (the founder of his typarchical dy- 
nasty) said to Dr. Johnson, that " there are few ways in 
which a man can be more innocently employed than in get- 
ting money ;" and he added, that " the more one thinks of 
this, the juster it will appear." Johnson agreed with him; 
and though it was a money-maker's observation, and though 
the more it is considered now, the more fallacious it will be 
found, the general system of trade might have justified it at 
that time. The entrance of an exciseman never occasioned 
any alarm or apprehension at No. 113 Bishopsgate-street- 
within, nor any uncomfortable feeling, unless the officer hap- 
pened to be one, who, by giving unnecessary trouble, and by 
gratuitous incivility in the exercise of authority, made an 
equitable law odious in its execution. They never there 
mixed weeds with their tobacco, nor adulterated it in any 
worse way ; and their snuff" was never rendered more pun- 
gent by stirring into it a certain proportion of pounded glass. 
The duties were honestly paid, with a clear perception that 
the impost fell lightly upon all whom it aff'ected, and affected 
those only who chose to indulge themselves in a pleasure 
which was still cheap, and which, without any injurious pri- 
vation, they might forego. Nay, when our good man ex- 
patiated upon the uses of tobacco, which Mr. Bacon de- 
murred at, and the doctor sometimes playfully disputed, he 



196 THE DOCTOR. 

ventured an opinion that among the final causes for which so 
excellent an herb had been created, the facilities afforded by- 
it towards raising the revenue in a well-governed country 
like our own, might be one. 

There was a strong family likeness between him and his 
sister, both in countenance and disposition. Elizabeth Alli- 
son was a person for whom the best and wisest man might 
have thanked Providence, if she had been allotted to him for 
helpmate. But though she had, in Shakspeare's language, 
" withered on the virgin thorn," hers had not been a life of 
single blessedness : she had been a blessing first to her pa- 
rents ; then to her brother and her brother's family, where 
she relieved an amiable but sickly sister-in-law from those 
domestic offices which require activity and forethought; 
lastly, after the dispersion of his sons, the transfer of the busi- 
ness to the eldest, and the breaking up of his old establish- 
ment, to the widower and his daughter, the only child who 
cleaved to him — not like Ruth to Naomi, by a meritorious act 
of duty, for in her case it was in the ordinary course of 
things, without either sacrifice or choice ; but the effect in 
endearing her to him was the same. 

In advanced stages of society, and nowhere more than in 
England at this time, the tendency of all things is to weaken 
the relations between parent and child, and frequently to de- 
stroy them, reducing human nature in this respect nearer to 
the level of animal life. Perhaps the greater number of male 
children who are " born into the world" in our part of it, are 
put out at as early an age, proportionally, as the young bird 
is driven from its nest, or the young beast turned off by its 
dam as being capable of feeding and protecting itself; and in 
many instances they are totally lost to the parent, though 
not in like manner forgotten. Mr. Allison never saw all his 
children together after his removal from London. The only 
time when his three sons met at the grange, was when they 
came there to attend their father's funeral ; nor would they 
then have been assembled, if the captain's ship had not hap- 
pened to have recently arrived in port. 

This is a state of things more favourable to the wealth than 
to the happiness of nations. It was a natural and pious cus- 
tom in patriarchal times that the dead should be gathered 
unto their people. " Bury me," said Jacob, when he gave 
his dying charge to his sons — " bury me with my fathers, in 
the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before 
Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with 
the field of Ephron the Hittite, for a possession of a burying 
place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife ; 
there they buried Isaac and Rebecca his wife ; and there I 
buried Leah." Had such a passage occurred in Homer, or 
in Dante, all critics would have concurred in admiring the 
truth and beauty of the sentiment. He had buried his beloved 



THE DOCTOR. 197 

Rachel by the way where she died ; but although he remem- 
bered this at his death, the orders which he gave were that 
his own remains should be laid in the sepulchre of his fathers. 
The same feehng prevails among many, or most of those sav- 
age tribes who are not utterly degraded. With them the 
tree is not left to lie where it falls. The body of one who 
dies on an expedition is interred on the spot, if distance or 
other circumstances render it inconvenient to transport the 
corpse ; but however long the journey, it is considered as a 
sacred duty that the bones should at some time or other be 
brought home. In Scotland, where the common rights of 
sepulture are performed with less decency than in any other 
Christian country, the care with which family burial grounds 
in the remoter parts are preserved, may be referred as much 
to natural feeling as to hereditary pride. 

But as indigenous flowers are eradicated by the spade and 
plough, so this feeling is destroyed in the stirring and bust- 
ling intercourse of commercial life. No room is left for it : 
as little of it at this time remains in wide America as in 
thickly peopled England. That to which soldiers and sailors 
are reconciled by the spirit of their profession and the 
chances of war and of the seas, the love of adventure and the 
desire of advancement cause others to regard with the 
same indifference ; and these motives are so prevalent, that 
the dispersion of families and the consequent disruption of 
natural ties, if not occasioned by necessity, would now in 
most instances be the effect of choice. Even those to whom 
it is an inevitable evil, and who feel it deeply as such, look 
upon it as something in the appointed course of things, as 
much as infirmity and age and death. 

It is well for us that in early life we never think of the vi- 
cissitudes which lie before us ; or look to them only with 
pleasurable anticipations as they approach. 

" Youlh 
Knows naught of changes : age hath traced them oft, 
Expects and can interpret them."* 

The thought of them, when it comes across us in middle 
life, brings with it only a transient sadness, like the shadow 
of a passing cloud. We turn our eyes from them while they 
are in prospect, but when they are in retrospect many a 
longing, lingering look is cast behind. So long as Mr. Alli- 
son was in business, he looked to Thaxted Grange as the 
place where he hoped one day to enjoy the blessings of re- 
tirement — that oiium cum dignitate, which in a certain sense 
the prudent citizen is more likely to attain than the success- 
ful statesman. It was the pleasure of recollection that gave 

* Isaac Commenus. 
19 



198 THE DOCTOR. 

this hope its zest and its strength. But after the object 
which during so many years he had held in view had been 
obtained, his day dreams, if he had allowed them to take 
their course, would have recurred more frequently to Bish- 
opsgate-street than they had ever wandered from thence to 
the scenes of his boyhood. They recurred thither oftener 
than he wished, although few men have been more masters of 
themselves ; and then the remembrance of his wife, whom he 
had lost by a lingering disease in middle age ; and of the chil- 
dren, those who had died during their childhood, and those 
who in reality were almost as much lost to him in the ways 
of the world, made him always turn for comfort to the prospect 
of that better state of existence in which they should once 
more all be gathered together, and where there would be 
neither change nor parting. His thoughts often fell into 
this train, when on summer evenings he was taking a soli- 
tary pipe in his arbour, with the church in sight, and the 
churchyard wherein at no distant time he was to be laid in his 
last abode. Such musings induced a sense of sober piety — of 
thankfulness for former blessings, contentment with the 
present, and humble yet sure and certain hope for futurity, 
which might vainly have been sought at prayer meetings, or 
evening lectures, where indeed little good can ever be ob- 
tained without some deleterious admixture, or alloy of baser 
feelings. 

The happiness which he had found in retirement was of a 
different kind from what he had contemplated : for the shades 
of evening were gathering when he reached the place of his 
long wished for rest, and the picture of it which had im- 
printed itself on his imagination was a morning view. But 
he had been prepared for this by that slow change of which 
we are not aware during its progress till we see it reflected 
in others, and are thus made conscious of it in ourselves ; 
and he found a satisfaction in the station which he occupied 
there, too worthy in its nature to be called pride, and which 
had not entered into his anticipations. It is said to have 
been a saying of George the Third, that the happiest condi- 
tion in which an Englishman could be placed, was just below 
that wherein it would have been necessary for him to act 
as a justice of the peace, and above that which would have 
rendered him liable to parochial duties. This was just Mr. 
Allison's position : there was nothing which brought him 
into rivalry or competition with the surrounding squirarchy, 
and the yeoman and peasantry respected him for his own 
character, as well as for his name's sake. He gave em- 
ployment to more persons than when he was engaged in 
trade, and his indirect influence over them was greater ; that 
of his sister was still more. The elders of the village re- 
membered her in her youth, and loved her for what she then 
had been as well as for what she now was ; the young 



THE DOCTOR. 199 

looked up to her as the Lady Bountiful, to whom no one 
that needed advice or assistance ever applied in vain. She 
it was who provided those much approved plumcakes, not 
the less savoury for being both homely and wholesome, the 
thought of which induced the children to look on to their 
Lent examination with hope, and prepare for it with alacrity. 
Those offices in a parish which are the province of tlie 
clergyman's wife, when he has made choice of one who 
knows her duty, and has both will and ability to discharge 
it. Miss Allison performed ; and she rendered Mr. Bacon the 
further, and to him individually the greater service of im- 
parting to his daughter those instructions which she had no 
mother to impart. Deborah could not have had a better 
teacher ; but as the present chapter has extended to a suffi 
cient length, 

Diremo il resto in quel che vien dipoi, 
Per non venire a noja a me e vol.* 



CHAPTER CIIL P. I. 

A FEW PARTICULARS CONCERNING NO. 113 BISHOPSGATE-STRKET' 
within; and of the family at THAXTED GRANGE. 

Opinion is the rate of things, 

From hence our peace doth flow ; 
, 1 have a better fate than kings, 

Because I think it so. 

Catharine Philips. 

The house wherein Mr. Allison realized by fair dealing 
and frugality the modest fortune which enabled him to re- 
purchase the homestead of his fathers, is still a tobacconist's, 
and has continued to be so from " the palmy days" of that 
trade, when King James vainly endeavoured by the expres- 
sion of his royal dislike, to discountenance the newly im- 
ported practice of smoking ; and Joshua Sylvester thundered 
from Mount Helicon a volley of holy shot, thinking that 
thereby *' tobacco" should be " battered, and the pipes shat- 
tered, about their ears that idly idolize so base and barbarous 
a weed, or at least-wise overlove so loathsome vanity." 
For he said, 

" If there be any herb in any place 
Most opposite to God's good herb of grace, 
'Tis doubtless this ; and this doth plainly prove it. 
That for the most, most graceless men do Icve it."* 

* Orlando Innamorato. 



SOO THE DOCTOR. 

Yet it was not long before the dead and unsavory odour of 
that weed, to which a Parisian was made to say that " sea 
coal smoke seemed a very Portugal perfume," prevailed as 
much in the raiment of the more coarsely clad part of the 
community, as the scent of lavender among those who were 
clothed in fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day : and 
it had grown so much in fashion, that it was said children 
" began to play with broken pipes, instead of corals, to make 
way for their teeth." 

Louis XIV. endeavoured just as ineffectually to discourage 
the use of snuif-taking. His valets de chamhre were obliged 
to renounce it when they were appointed to their office ; and 
the Duke of Harcourt was supposed to have died of apoplexy 
in consequence of having, to please his majesty, left off" at 
once a habit which he had carried to excess. 

I know not through what intermediate hands the business 
at No. 113 has passed, since the name of Allison was with' 
drawn from the firm ; nor whether Mr. Evans, by whom it 
is now carried on there, is in any way related by descent 
with that family. Matters of no greater importance to most 
men have been made the subject of much antiquarian inves- 
tigation ; and they who busy themselves in such investiga- 
tions must not be said to be ill employed, for they find 
harmless amusement in the pursuit, and sometimes put up a 
chance truth of which others, soon or late, discover the appli- 
cation. The house has at this time a more antiquated appear- 
ance than any other in that part of the street, though it 
was modernized some forty or fifty years after Mr. Bacon's 
friend left it. The first floor then projected several feet 
farther over the street than at present, and the second 
several feet farther over the first ; and the windows, which 
still extend the whole breadth of the front, were then com- 
posed of small casement panes. But in the progress of 
those improvements which are now carrying on in the city 
with as much spirit as at the western end of the metropolis, 
and which have almost reached Mr. Evan's door, it cannot 
be long before the house will be either wholly removed, or 
so altered as no longer to be recognised. 

The present race of Londoners little know what the ap- 
pearance of the city was a century ago ; their own city, I 
was about to have said — but it was the city of their great- 
grandfathers, not theirs, from which the elder Allisons retired 
in the year 1746. At that time the kennels (as in Paris) were 
in the middle of the street, and there were no footpaths ; 
spouts projected the rainwater in streams, against which 
umbrellas, if umbrellas had been then in use, could have 
afforded no defence ; and large signs, such as are now only 
to be seen at country inns, were suspended before every 
shop from posts which impeded the way, or from iron sup- 
ports strongly fixed into the front of the house. The swing- 



THE DOCTOR. 201 

Ing of one of these broad signs in a high wind, and the weight 
of the iron on which it acted, sometimes brought the wall 
down; and it is recorded that one front fall of this kind in 
Fleet-street maimed several persons, and killed " two young 
ladies, a cobbler, and the king's jeweller." 

The sign at No. 113 was an Indian chief smoking the cal- 
umet. Mr. Allison had found it there ; and when it became 
necessary that a new one should be substituted, he retained 
the same figure, though if he had been to choose he would 
have greatly preferred the head of Sir Walter Raleigh, by 
whom, according to the common belief, he supposed tobacco 
had been introduced into this country. The Water Poet im- 
puted it to the devil himself, and published 

" A Proclamation, 

Or Approbation, 
From the King of Execration 

To every Nation, 
For Tobacco's propagation." 

Mr. Allison used to shake his head at such libellous asper- 
sions. Raleigh was a great favourite with him, and held, in- 
deed, in especial respect, though not as the patron of his old 
trade, as St. Crispin is of the gentle craft, yet as the founder 
of his fortune. He thought it proper, therefore, that he 
should possess Sir Walter's History of the World, though 
he had never found inclination, or summoned up resolution, 
to undertake its perusal. 

Common sense has been defined by Sir Egerton Brydges 
"to mean nothing more than an uneducated judgment, arising 
from a plain and coarse understanding, exercised upon com- 
mon concerns, and rendered effective rather by experience 
than by any regular process of the intellectual powers. If 
this," he adds, " be the proper meaning of that quality, we 
cannot wonder that books are little fitted for its cultivation." 
Except that there was no coarseness in his nature, this would 
apply to Mr. Allison. He had been bred up with the notion 
that it behooved him to attend to his business, and that read- 
ing formed no part of it. Nevertheless he had acquired some 
liking for books by looking casually now and then over the 
leaves of those unfortunate volumes with which the shop 
was continually supplied for its daily consumption. 

Many a load of criticism, 
Elaborate products of the midnight toil 
Of Belgian brains,* 

went there ; and many a tome of old law, old physic, and old 
divinity ; old history as well ; books of which many were at 
all times rubbish ; some which, though little better, would 

* Akenside. 



202 THE DOCTOR. 

now sell for more shillings by the page than they then cost 
pence by the pound ; and others, the real value of which is 
perhaps as little known now as it was then. Such of these 
as in later years caught his attention, he now and then res- 
cued from the remorseless use to which they had been con- 
demned. They made a curious assortment with his wife's 
books of devotion or amusement, wherewith she had some- 
times beguiled, and sometimes soothed the weary hours of 
long and frequent illness. Among the former were Scott's 
*' Christian Life," Bishop Bayly's " Practice of Piety," Bishop 
Taylor's " Holy Living and Dying," Drelincourt on Death, 
with Defoe's lying story of Mrs. Veal's ghost as a puff pre- 
liminary, and the Night Thoughts. Among the latter were 
Cassandra, the Guardian, and Spectator, Mrs. Rowe's Letters, 
Richardson's novels, and Pomfret's Poems. 

Mrs. Allison had been able to do little for her daughter of 
that little, which, if her state of health and spirits had per- 
mitted, she might have done ; this, therefore, as well as the 
more active duties of the household, devolved upon Elizabeth, 
who was of a better constitution in mind as well as body. 
Elizabeth, before she went to reside with her brother, had 
acquired all the accomplishments which a domestic education 
in the country could in those days impart. Her book of re- 
ceipts, culinary and medical, might have vied with the 
"Queen's Cabinet Unlocked." The spelling indeed was 
such as ladies used in the reign of Queen Anne, and in the 
old time before her, when every one spelled as she thought fit : 
but it was written in a well proportioned Italian hand, with 
fine down strokes and broad up ones, equally distinct and 
beautiful. Her speech was good Yorkshire, that is to say 
good provincial English, not the worse for being provincial, 
and a little softened by five-and-twenty years residence in 
London. Some sisters, who in those days kept a boarding 
school of the first repute in one of the midland counties, used 
to say when they spoke of an old pupil, " her went to school 
to tye." Miss Allison's language was not of this kind — it 
savoured of rusticity, not of ignorance ; and where it was 
peculiar, as in the metropolis, it gave a raciness to the con- 
versation of an agreeable woman. 

She had been well instructed in ornamental work as well 
as ornamental penmanship. Unlike most fashions, this had 
continued to be in fashion because it continued to be of use ; 
though no doubt some of the varieties which Taylor the 
Water Poet enumerates in his praise of the needle, might 
have been then as little understood as now : — 



'^ Tent-work, raised-work, laid-work, prest-work, net-work. 
Most curious pearl, or rare Italian cut-work, 
Fine fern-stitch, finny-stitch, new-stitch, and chain-stitch, 
Brave bred-stitch, fisher-stitch, Irish-stitch, and queen-stitch, 



THE DOCTOR. 203 

The Spanish-stitch, rosemary-stitch, and maw-stitch, 
The smarting whip-stitch, back-stitch, and the cross-stitch. 

All these are good, and these we must allow ; 

And these are everywhere in practice now. 

There was a book published in the Water Poet's days, with 
the title of " School House for the Needle ;" it consisted of 
two volumes in oblong quarto, that form being suited to its 
plates " of sundry sorts of patterns and examples ;" and it 
contained a " Dialogue in verse between Diligence and Sloth." 
If Betsey Allison had studied in this " School House," she 
could not have been a greater proficient with the needle than 
she became under her aunt's teaching : nor would she have 
been more 

versed in the arts 
Of pies, puddings, and tarts,* 

if she had gone through a course of practical lessons in one 
of the pastry schools which are common in Scotland, but 
were tried without success in London, about the middle of 
the last century. Deborah partook of these instructions at 
her father's desire. In all that related to the delicacies of a 
country table, she was glad to be instructed, because it ena- 
bled her to assist her friend ; but it appeared strange to her 
that Mr. Bacon should wish her to learn ornamental work, 
for which she neither had, nor could foresee any use. But 
if the employment had been less agreeable than she found it 
in such company, she would never have disputed or ques- 
tioned his will. 

For so small a household, a more active or cheerful one could 
nowhere have been found than at the grange. Ben Jonson 
reckoned among the happinessess of Sir Robert Wroth, that 
of being " with unbought provision blest." This blessing 
Mr. Allison enjoyed in as great a degree as his position in 
life permitted ; he neither killed his own meat nor grew his 
own corn ; but he had his poultry yard, his garden and his 
orchard ; he baked his own bread, brewed his own beer, and 
was supplied with milk, cream, and butter from his own dairy. 
It is a fact not unworthy of notice, that the most inteUigent 
farmers in the neighbourhood of London are persons who 
have taken to farming as a business, because of their strong 
inclination for rural employments ; one of the very best in 
Middlesex, when the survey of that county was published 
by the Board of Agriculture, had been a tailor. Mr. Allison 
did not attempt to manage the land which he kept in his own 
hands ; but he had a trusty bailiff, and soon acquired know- 
ledge enough for superintending what was done. When he 
retired from trade he gave over all desire for gain, which 

* T. Warton. 



204 THE DOCTOR. 

indeed he had never desired for its own sake ; he sought now 
only wholesome occupation, and those comforts which may 
be said to have a moral zeal. They might be called luxuries, 
if that word could be used in a virtuous sense without some- 
thing so to qualify it. It is a curious instance of the modifi- 
cation which words undergo in different countries, that lux- 
ury has always a sinful acceptation in the southern languages 
of Europe, and lust an innocent one in the northern; the 
harmless meaning of the latter word, we have retained in the 
verb to list. 

Every one who looks back upon the scenes of his youth, 
has one spot upon which the last light of the evening sun- 
shine rests. The grange was that spot in Deborah's ret- 
rospect. 



CHAPTER CIV. P. I. 

4 REMARKABLE EXAMPLE, SHOWING THAT A WISE MAN, WHEN 
HE RISES IN THE MORNING, LITTLE KNOWS WHAT HE MAY DO 
BEFORE NIGHT. 

Now I love, 
And so as in so short a time I may ; 
Yet so as time shall never break that so, 
And therefore so accept of Elinor. 

Robert Greene. 

One summer evening the doctor, on his way back from a 
visit in that direction, stopped, as on such opportunities he 
usually did, at Mr. Bacon's wicket, and looked in at the open 
casement to see if his friends were within. Mr. Bacon was 
sitting there alone, with a book open on the table before him ; 
and looking round when he heard the horse stop, " Come in, 
doctor," said he, "if you have a few minutes to spare. You 
were never more welcome." 

The doctor replied, " I hope nothing ails either Deborah 
or yourself V "No," said Mr Bacon, "God be thanked! 
but something has occurred which concerns both." 

When the doctor entered the room, he perceived that the 
wonted serenity of his friend's countenance was overcast by 
a shade of melancholy thought. " Nothing," said he, *' 1 hope 
has happened to distress youl" " Only to disturb us," was 
the reply. " Most people would probably think that we 
ought to consider it a piece of good fortune. One who would 
be thought a good match for her has proposed to marry De- 
borah." 



THE DOCTOR. 205 

" Indeed !" said the doctor ; " and who is he 1" feeling, as 
he asked the question, an unusual warmth in his face. 

" Joseph Hebblethwaite, of the Willows. He broke his 
mind to me this morning, saying that he thought it best to 
speak to me before he made any advances himself to the 
young woman : indeed he had had no opportunity of so r"^ 
ing, for he had seen little of her ; but he had heard enougn 
of her character to believe that she would make him a 
good wife ; and this, he said, was all he looked for, for he 
was well to do in the world." 

" And what answer did you make to this matter-of-fact 
way of proceeding ?" 

" I told him that I commended the very proper course he 
had taken, and that I was obliged to him for the good opinion 
of my daughter which he was pleased to entertain : that 
marriage was an affair in which I should never attempt to 
direct her inclinations, being confident that she would never 
give me cause to oppose them ; and that I would talk with 
her upon the proposal, and let him know the result. As soon 
as I mentioned it to Deborah, she coloured up to her eyes 
and with an angry look, of which I did not think those eyes 
had been capable, she desired me to tell him that he had 
better lose no time in looking elsewhere, for his thinking of 
her was of no use. Do you know any ill of him 1 said I. 
No, she replied, but I never heard any good, and that's ill 
enough. And I do not like his looks." 

" Well said, Deborah !" cried the doctor, clapping his 
hands so as to produce a sonorous token of satisfaction. 

" Surely, my child, said I, he is not an ill-looking person ? 
Father, she rephed, you know he looks as if he had not one 
idea in his head to keep company with another." 

*' Well said, Deborah !" repeated the doctor. 

" Why, doctor, do you know any ill of him ]" 

" None. But, as Deborah says, I know no good ; and if 
there had been any good to be known, it must have come 
within my knowledge. I cannot help knowing who the per- 
sons are to whom the peasantry in my rounds look with 
respect and good will, and whom they consider their friends 
as well as their betters. And in like manner, I know who 
they are from whom they never expect either courtesy or 
kindness." 

" You are right, my friend ; and Deborah is right. Her 
answer came from a wise heart ; and I was not sorry that 
her determination was so promptly made, and so resolutely 
pronounced. But I wish, if it had pleased God, the offer had 
been one which she could have accepted with her own wil- 
ling consent, and with my full approbation." 

" Yet," said the doctor, " I have often thought how sad a 
thing it would be for you ever to part with her." 

" Far more sad will it be for me to leave her unprotected, 
19* 



206 THE DOCTOR. 

as it is but too likely that, in the ordinary course of nature, 
I one day shall ; and as any day in that same ordinary 
course, I so possibly may ! Our best intentions, even when 
they have been most prudentially formed, fail often in their 
issue. I meant to train up Deborah in the way she should 
go, by fitting her for that state of life in which it had pleased 
God to place her, so that she might have made a good wife 
for some honest man in the humbler walks of life, and have 
been happy with him." 

" And how was it possible," replied the doctor, " that you 
could have succeeded better 1 Is she not quahfied to be a 
good man's wife in any rank 1 Her manner would not do 
discredit to a mansion; her management would make a farm 
prosperous, or a cottage comfortable ; and for her principles, 
and temper, and cheerfulness, they would render any home a 
happy one." 

" You have not spoken too highly m her praise, doctor. 
But as she has from her childhood been all in all to me, there 
is a danger that I may have become too much so to her ; and 
that while her habits have properly been made conformable 
to our poor means, and her poor prospects, she has been ac- 
customed to a way of thinking, and a kind of conversation, 
which have given her a distaste for those whose talk is only 
of sheep and of oxen, and whose thoughts never get beyond 
*he range of their everyday employments. In her present 
circle, I do not think there is one man with whom she might 
otherwise have had a chance of settling in life, to whom she 
would not have the same intellectual objections as to Joseph 
Hebblethwaite : though I am glad that the moral objection 
was that which first instinctively occurred to her. 

" I wish it were otherwise, both for her sake and my own ; 
for hers, because the present separation would have more 
than enough to compensate it, and would in its consequences 
mitigate the evil of the final one, whenever that may be ; for 
my own, because I should then have no cause whatever to 
render the prospect of dissolution otherwise than welcome, 
but be as wiUing to die as to sleep. It is not owing to any 
distrust in Providence, that I am not thus willing now — God 
forbid ! But if I gave heed to my own feelings, I should 
think that I am not long for this world ; and surely it were 
wise to remove, if possible, the only cause that makes me 
fear to think so." 

" Are you sensible of any symptoms that can lead to such 
an apprehension r' said the doctor. 

" Of nothing that can be called a symptom. I am to all 
appearance in good health, of sound body and mind ; and you 
know how unlikely my habits are to occasion any disturb- 
ance in either. But I have indefinable impressions — sensa- 
tions they might almost be called — which, as I cannot but 
feel them, so I cannot but regard them." 



THE DOCTOR. 207 

" Can you not describe these sensations ?" 

" No better than by saying, that they hardly amount to 
sensations, and are indescribable." 

" Do not," said the doctor, " I entreat you, give way to 
any feelings of this kind. They may lead to consequences, 
which, without shortening or endangering life, would render 
it anxious and burdensome, and destroy both your useful- 
ness and your comfort." 

" I have this feeling, doctor ; and you shall prescribe for it, 
if you think it requires either regimen or physic. But at 
present you will do me more good by assisting me to pro- 
cure for Deborah such a situation as she must necessarily 
look for on the event of my death. What I have laid by, 
even if it should be most advantageously disposed of, would 
afford her only a bare subsistence ; it is a resource in case 
of sickness, but while in health, it would never be her wish 
to eat the bread of idleness. You may have opportunities 
of learning whether any lady within the circle of your prac- 
tice wants a young person in whom she might confide, 
either as an attendant upon herself, or to assist in the 
management of her children, or her household. You may 
be sure this is not the first time that I have thought upon the 
subject ; but the circumstance which has this day occurred, 
and the feeling of which I have spoken, have pressed it upon 
my consideration. And the inquiry may better be made and 
the step taken while it is a matter of foresight, than when it 
has become one of necessity." 

" Let me feel your pulse !" 

" You will detect no other disorder there," said Mr. Bacon, 
holding out his arm as he spoke, " than what has been caused 
by this conversation, and the declaration of a purpose, which, 
though for sometime perpended, 1 had never till now fully 
acknowledged to myself." 

"You have never then mentioned it to Deborah 1" 

" In no other way than by sometimes incidentally speaking 
of the way of life which would be open to her, in case of her 
being unmarried at my death." 

" And you have made up your mind to part ^yith her V 

" Upon a clear conviction that I ought to do so ; that it is 
best for herself and me." 

" Well, then, you will allow me to converse with her first, 
upon a different subject. You will permit me to see whe- 
ther I can speak more successfully for myself, than you have 
done for Joseph Hebblethwaite. Have I your consent 1" 

Mr. Bacon rose in great emotion, and taking his friend's 
hand, pressed it fervently and tremulously. Presently they 
heard the wicket open, and Deborah came in. 

" I dare say, Deborah," said her father, composing him- 
self, " you have been telling Betsey Allison of the advan- 
tageous oflfer you have this day refused." 



208 THE DOCTOR. 

"Yes," replied Deborah; "and what do you think she 
said ? That httle as she likes him, rather than that 1 should 
be thrown away upon sucii a man, she could almost make up 
her mind to marry him herself." 

*' And I," said the doctor, " rather than such a man should 
have you, would marry you myself." 

" Was I not right in refusing him, doctor ?" 

" So right, that you never pleased me so well before ; and 
never can please me better — unless you will accept of me in 
his stead." 

She gave a little start, and looked at him half incredulously, 
and half angrily withal ; as if what he had said was too light 
in its manner to be serious, and yet too serious in its import 
to be spoken in jest. But when he took her by the hand, 
and said, " Will you, dear Deborah "?" with a pressure, and in 
a tone that left no doubt of his earnest meaning, she cried, 
" Father, what am I to say ] speak for me !" " Take her, my 
friend!" said Mr. Bacon. "My blessing be upon you both. 
And if it be not presumptuous to use the words — let me say 
for myself, ' Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in 



CHAPTER CV. P. I. 

A WORD OF NOBS, AND AN ALLUSION TO C^SAR SOME CIRCUM- 
STANCES RELATING TO THE DOCTOr's SECOND LOVE, WHEREBY 
THOSE OF HIS THIRD AND LAST ARE ACCOUNTED FOR. 

Un mal que se entra per medio los ojos, 
y va se derecho hasta el corazon ; 
Alii en ser llegado se torna aficion, 
Y da mil pesares, plazeres y enojos ; 
Causa alegrias, tristezas, antojos ; 
Haze llorar, y haze reir, 
Haze cantar, yhaze planir, 
Dapensamientos dos mil amanojos. 

Question de Amor. 

" Nobs," said the doctor, as he mounted and rode away 
from Mr. Bacon's garden gate, " when I alighted and fast- 
ened thee to that wicket, I thought as little of what was to 
befall me then, and what I was about to do. as thou knowest 
of it now." 

Man has an inward voice as well as an " inward eye,"* a 
voice distinct from that of conscience. It is the companion, 
if not " the bliss of solitude ;"* and though he sometimes em- 

* Wordsworth. 



THE DOCTOR. 209 

ploys it to deceive himself, it gives him good counsel, perhaps, 
quite as often, calls him to account, reproves him for having 
left unsaid what he ought to have said, or for having said 
what he ought not to have said, reprehends or approves, ad- 
monishes or encourages. On this occasion it was a joyful 
and gratulatory voice, with which the doctor spake mentally, 
first to Nobs, and afterward to himself, as he rode back to 
Doncaster. 

By this unuttered address the reader would perceive, if he 
should haply have forgotten what was intimated in some of 
the ante-initial chapters, and the first post-initial one, that the 
doctor had a horse, named Nobs ; and the question who was 
Nobs, would not be necessary, if this were all that was to be 
said concerning him. There is much to be said ; the tongue 
that could worthily express his merits, had need be like the 
pen of a ready writer ; though 1 will not say of him as 
Berni or Boiardo has said of 

" quel valeroso e bel destriero," 

Argalia's horse, Rubicano, that 

" Un che volesse dir lodando il vero, 
Bisogno aria di parlar piu ch' umano." 

At present, however, I shall only say this in his praise, he 
was altogether unlike the horse of which it was said he had 
only two faults, that of being hard to catch, and that of being 
good for nothing when he was caught. For whether in 
stable or in field. Nobs would come like a dog to his master's 
call. There was not a better horse for the doctor's purpose in 
all England : no, nor in all Christendom; no, nor in all Houy- 
hnhnmdom, if that country had been searched to find one. 

Ccesarem vefiis, said Cassar to the Egyptian boatmen. But 
what was that which the Egyptian boat carried, compared 
to what Nobs bore upon that saddle to which constant use 
had given its polish bright and brown ? 

Virtutem solidi pectoris hospitam 
Idem portat equus, qui dominum.* 

Nobs therefore carried — all that is in these volumes ; yea, 
and as all future generations were, according to Madame 
Bourignon, actually as well as potentially contained in 
Adam — all editions and translations of them, however nu- 
merous. 

But on that evening he carried something of more impor- 
tance ; for on the life and weal of his rider there depended 
from that hour, as far as its dependance was upon anything 

* Casimir. 



210 THE DOCTOR. 

earthly, the happiness of one of the best men in the world, 
and of a daughter who was not unworthy of such a father. 
If the doctor had been thrown from his horse and killed, an 
hour or two earlier, the same day, it would have been a 
dreadful shock both to Deborah and Mr. Bacon ; and they 
would always have regretted the loss of one whose company 
they enjoyed, whose character they respected, and for whom 
they entertained a feeling of more than ordinary regard. 
But had such a casualty occurred now, it would have been 
the severest affliction that could have befallen them. 

Yet till that hour Deborah had never thought of Dove as 
a husband, nor Dove of Deborah as a wife, that is, neither 
had ever looked at the possibility of their being one day 
united to each other in that relation. Deborah liked him, 
and he liked her ; and beyond this sincere liking neither of 
them for a moment dreamed that the inchnation would ever 
proceed. They had not fallen in love with each other ; nor 
had they run in love, nor walked into it, nor been led into it, 
nor entrapped into it ; nor had they caught it. 

How then came they to be in love at last? The question 
may be answered by an incident which Mr. John Davis re- 
lates in his Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United 
States of America. The traveller was making his way 
" faint and wearily" on foot to a place called by the strange 
name of Frying Pan, for the Americans have given all sorts 
of names, except fitting ones, to the places which ihey have 
settled, or discovered, and their Australian kinsmen seem to 
be following the same absurd and inconvenient course. It 
will occasion, hereafter, as much confusion as the sameness 
of Mohammedan proper names, in all ages and countries, 
causes in the history of all Mohammedan nations. Mr. 
Davis had walked till he was tired without seeing any sign 
of the place at which he expected long before to have ar- 
rived. At length he met a lad in the wilderness, and asked 
him, "How far, my boy, is it to Frying Pan?" The boy 
rephed, " You be in the Pan now." 

So it was with the doctor and with Deborah; they found 
themselves in love, as much to their surprise as it was to the 
traveller when he found himself in the Pan, and much more 
to their satisfaction. And upon a little after reflection they 
both perceived how they came to be so. 

There's a chain of causes 
Link'd to effects ; invincible necessity 
That whate'er is, could not but so have been.* 

Into such questions, however, I enter not. *^ JVolo altum 
sapere,'''' they be matters above my capacity : the cobler's 
check shall never light on my head, " JVe mtor ultru crepi' 

* Dryden, 



THE DOCTOR. 211 

dam^* Opportunity, which makes thieves, makes lovers 
also, and is the greatest of all matchmakers. And when 
opportunity came, the doctor 

Por ubbidir chi sempre ubbidir debbe 
La mente,t 

acted promptly. Accustomed as he was to weigh things of 
moment in the balance, and hold it with as even and as nice 
a hand as if he were compounding a prescription on which 
the Ufe of a patient might depend, he was no shillishallier, 
nor ever wasted a precious minute in pro-and-conning, when 
it was necessary at once to decide and act. 

Chi ha tempo, e tempo aspetta, il tempo perde4 

His first love, as the reader will remember, came by inocu- 
lation, and was taken at first sight. This third and last, he 
used to say, came by inoculation also ; but it was a more 
remarkable case, for eleven years elapsed before there was 
an appearance of his having taken the infection. How it 
happened that an acquaintance of so many years, and which 
at its very commencement had led to confidence, and esteem, 
and familiarity, and, friendship, should have led no farther, 
may easily be explained. Dove, when he first saw Deborah, 
was in love with another person. 

He had attended poor Lucy Bevan from the eighteenth 
^ear of her age, when a tendency to consumption first mani- 
fested itself in her, till the twenty-fifth, when she sunk under 
that slow and insidious malady. She who for five of those 
seven years fancied herself during every interval, or miti- 
gation of the disease, restored to health, or in the way of 
recovery, had fixed her affections upon him. And he who 
had gained those affections by his kind and careful attendance 
upon a case of which he soon saw cause to apprehend the 
fatal termination, becoming aware of her attachment as he 
became more and more mournfully convinced that no human 
skill could save her, found himself unawares engaged in a 
second passion, as hopeless as his first. That had been 
wilful ; this was equally against his will and his judgment ; 
that had been a folly, this was an affliction. And the only 
consolation which he found in it was, that the consciousness 
of loving and of being beloved, which made him miserable, 
was a happiness to her as long as she retained a hope of hfe, 
or was capable of feeling satisfaction in anything relating to 
this world. Caroline Bowles, whom no authoress or author 
has ever surpassed in truth, and tenderness, and sanctity of 
feeling, could relate such a story as it ought to be related, 

♦ Thomas Lodge. t Pulci. t Serafino da L'Aquila. 



212 THE DOCTOR. 

if stories which in themselves are purely painful ought erer 
to be told. I will not attempt to tell it : for I wish not to 
draw upon the reader's tears, and have none to spare for it 
myself. 

This unhappy attachment, though he never spoke of it, 
being always but too certain in what it must end, was no 
secret to Mr. Bacon and his daughter : and when death had 
dissolved the earthly tie, it seemed to them, as it did to him- 
self, that his affections were wedded to the dead. It was 
likely that the widower should think so, judging of his 
friend's heart by his own. 

Sorrow and Time will ever paint too well 

The lost when hopeless, all things loved in vain.* 

His feelings upon such a point had been expressed for him 
by a most prolific and unequal writer, whose poems, more 
perhaps than those of any other English author, deserve to 
be carefully winnowed, the grain, which is of the best quality, 
being now lost amid the heap of chaff. 

Lord, keep me faithful to the trust 
Which my dear spouse reposed in me : 

To her now dead, preserve me just 
In all that should performed be. 

For though our being man and wife 

Extendeth only to this hfe, 

Yet neither life nor death should end 

The being of a faithful friend. f 

The knowledge that the doctor's heart was thus engaged at 
the time of their first acquaintance, had given to Deborah's 
intercourse with him an easy frankness which otherwise 
might perhaps not have been felt, and could not have been 
assumed ; and the sisterlike feeling into which this had 
grown, underwent no change after Lucy Sevan's death. He 
meantime saw that she was so happy with her father, and 
supposed her father's happiness so much depended upon her, 
that to have entertained a thought of separating them (even 
if the suitableness of such a marriage in other respects had 
ever entered into his imagination) would have seemed to 
him like a breach of friendship. Yet, if Mr. Bacon had died 
before he opened his mind to the doctor upon occasion of 
Joseph Hebblethwaite's proposal, it is probable that one of 
the first means of consolation which would have occurred to 
him, would have been to offer the desolate daughter a home, 
together with his hand ; so well was he acquainted with her 
domestic merits, so highly did he esteem her character, and 
so truly did he admire the gifts with which nature had en- 
dowed her — 

* Robert Landor. t Wither. 



THE DOCTOR. 213 



Her sweet humour, 
That was as easy as a calm, and peaceful ; 
All her affections, like the dews on roses. 
Fair as the flowers themselves, as sweet and gentle * 



INTERCHAPTER XII. 

THE AUTHOR REGRETS THAT HE CANNOT MAKE HIMSELF KNOWN 
TO CERTAIN READERS ; STATES THE POSSIBLE REASONS FOR 
HIS SECRESY ; MAKES NO USE IN SO DOING OF THE LICENSE 
WHICH HE SEEMS TO TAKE OUT IN HIS MOTTO ; AND STATING 
THE PRETENCES WHICH HE ADVANCES FOR HIS WORK, DISCLAIM- 
ING THE WHILE ALL MERIT FOR HIMSELF, MODESTLY PRESENTS 
THEM UNDER A GRECIAN VEIL. 

''EvS-a yap tl Sc7 i/'eC^oj Xey£(jSat Xeyia^o). 

Herodotus. 

There is more gratitude in the world than the worldly be- 
lieve, or than the ungrateful are capable of believing. And 
knowing this, I consequently know how greaft a sacrifice I 
make in remaining incognito. 

Reputation is a bubble upon the rapid stream of time ; pop- 
ularity, a splash in the great pool of oblivion ; fame itself but 
a full-blown bladder, or at best a balloon. There is no sac- 
rifice in declining them ; for in escaping these you escape the 
impertinences and the intrusions which never fail to follow 
in their train. But that this book will find some readers af- 
ter the author's own heart is certain ; they will lose some- 
thing in not knowing who the individual is with whom they 
would delight to form a personal, as they have already 
formed a moral and intellectual friendship : 

For in this world, to reckon everything, 
Pleasure to man there is none comparable 

As is to read with understanding 
In books of wisdon, they ben so delectable 
Which sound to virtue, and ben profitable. t 

And though my loss is not of this kind, yet it is great also, 
for in each of these unknown admirers I lose the present ad- 
vantage of a well-wisher, and the possible, or even probable 
benefit of a future friend. 

Eugenius ! Eusebius ! Sophron ! how gladly would ye be- 
come acquainted with my outward man, and commune with 

* Beaumont and Fletcher. f Trevisa. 



214 THE DOCTOR, 

me face to face ! How gladly would ye, Sophronia ! Euse- 
bia! Eugenia! 

With how radiant a countenance and how light a step 
would Euphrosyne advance to greet me ! With how benign 
an aspect would Amanda silently thank me for having held 
up a mirror in which she has unexpectedly seen herself ! 

Letitia's eyes would sparkle at the sight of one whose wri- 
tings had given her new joy. Penserosa would requite me 
with a gentle look for cheering her solitary hours, and mo- 
ving her sometimes to a placid smile, sometimes to quiet and 
pleasurable tears. 

And you, Marcellus, from whom your friends, your country, 
and your kind have everything to hope, how great a pleasure 
do I forego by rendering it impossible for you to seek me, 
and commence an acquaintance with the sure presentiment 
that it would ripen into confidence and friendship ! 

There is another and more immediate gratification which 
this resolution compels me to forego, that of gratifying those 
persons who, if they knew from whom the book proceeded, 
would peruse it with heightened zest for its author's sake , 
old acquaintance who would perceive in some of those sec- 
ondary meanings which will be understood only by those for 
whom they were intended, that though we have long been 
widely separaHed, and probably are never again to meet in 
this world, they are not forgotten; and old friends, who 
would take a livelier interest in the reputation which the 
work obtains, than it would now be possible for me to feel in 
it myself. 

" And why, sir," says an obliging and inquisitive reader, 
"should you deprive your friends and acquaintance of that 
pleasure, though you are willing to sacrifice it yourself?" 

" Why, sir, do you ask ]" 

Ah, that is the mystery 
Of this wonderful history, 
And you wish that you could tell !* 

" A question not to be asked," said an odder person than I 
shall ever pretend to be, " is a question not to be answered." 

Nevertheless, gentle reader, in courtesy I will give sundry 
answers to your interrogation, and leave you to fix upon 
which of them you may think likely to be the true one. 

The author may be of opinion that his name, not being 
heretofore known to the public, could be of no advantage to 
his book. 

Or, on the other hand, if his name were already well 
known, he might think the book stands in no need of it, and 
may safely be trusted to its own merits. He may wish to 

* Southey. 



THE DOCTOR. 215 

secure for it a fairer trial than it could otherwise obtain, and 
intend to profit by the unbiased opinions which will thus 
reach his ear; thinking complacently with Benedict, that 
" happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them 
to mending." In one of Metastasio's dramatic epithalamiums, 
Minerva says, 

" L'onore, a cut 
Venni proposta anch' io 
Piu meritar, che consegair desio ;" 

and he might say this with the goddess of wisdom. 

He may be so circumstanced that it would be inconvenient 
as well as unpleasant for him to offend certain persons — Sir 
Andrew Agnewites, for example — whose conscientious but 
very mischievous notions he nevertheless thinks it his 
duty to oppose, when he can do so consistently with dis- 
cretion. 

He may have wagers dependant upon the guesses that will 
be made concerning him. 

Peradventure it might injure him in his professional pur- 
suits, were he to be known as an author, and that he had 
neglected " some sober calling for this idle trade." 

He may be a very modest man, who can muster courage 
enough for publication, and yet dares not encounter any fur- 
ther publicity. 

Unknown, perhaps his reputation 
Escapes the tax of defamation, 
And wrapp'd in darkness, laughs unhurt, 
While critic blockheads throw their dirt ; 
But he who madly prints his name, 
Invites his foe to take sure aim."* 

He may be so shy, that if his book were praised, he would 
shrink from the notoriety into which it would bring him ; or 
so sensitive, that his mortification would be extreme, if it 
were known among his neighbours that he had been made 
the subject of sarcastic and contemptuous criticism. 

Or if he ever possessed this diffidence, he may have got 
completely rid of it in his intercourse with the world, and 
have acquired that easy habit of simulation without which no 
one can take his degree as master of arts in that great uni- 
versity. To hear various opinions concerning the book and 
the various surmises concerning the author, take part in the 
conversation, mystify some of his acquaintance and assist 
others in mystifying themselves, may be more amusing to 
him than any amusement of which he could partake in his 

* Lloyd. 



216 THE DOCTOR. 

own character. There are some secrets which it is a misery 
to know, and some which the tongue itches to commmiicate ; 
but this is one which it is a pleasure to know and to keep. 
It gives to the possessor, quasically speaking, a double exist- 
ence : the exoteric person mingles as usual in society, while 
the esoteric is like John the Giganticide in his coat of dark- 
ness, or that knight who, in the days of King Arthur, used to 
walk invisible. 

The best or the worst performer at a masquerade may 
have less delight in the consciousness or conceit of their own 
talents, than he may take in conversing with an air of perfect 
unconcern about his own dear book. It may be sport for 
him to hear it scornfully condemned by a friend, and pleas- 
ure to find it thoroughly relished by an enemy. 

The secrets of nature 
Have not more gift in taciturnity.* 

Peradventure he praises it himself with a sincerity for which 
every reader will give him full credit ; or peradventure he 
condemns it, for the sake of provoking others to applaud it 
more warmly in defence of their own favourable and pre-ex- 
pressed opinion. Whether of these courses, thinkest thou, 
gentle reader, is he most likely to pursue ? 1 will only tell thee 
that either would to him be equally easy and equally enter- 
taining. " Ye shall know that we may dissemble in earnest 
as well as in sport, under covert and dark terms, and in 
learned and apparent speeches, in short sentences and by 
long ambage and circumstance of words, and finally, as well 
when we lie, as when we tell the truth."! 

In any one of the supposed cases, sufficient reason is 
shown for his keeping, and continuing to keep his own se- 
cret. 

En nous formant, nature a ses caprices, 
Divers penchans en nous elle fait observer. 
Les uns, a s'exposer, trouvent inille delices ; 

Moi, j'entrouvea me conserver.J 

And if there be any persons who are not satisfied with this 
explanation, I say to them, in the words of Jupiter, 

" STET PRO RATIONE VOLUNTAS." 

Moreover, resting my claim to the gratitude of this gener- 
ation, and of those which are to come, upon the matter of 
these volumes, and disclaiming for myself all merit except 
that of fidehty to the lessons of my philosopher and friend, I 

* Troilus and Cressida. f Puttenham. % Moliere. 



W)g 



THE DOCTOR. 217 

shall not fear to appropriate, mutatis mutandis and having 
thus qualified them, the proud words of Arrian:- 

'AAX' iKc7vo avaypdcfxa, Sti qiol ■jrarfiis ri, km yiyos, Koi apx^h oi6s ol \hYoi elai 
ri — Kou. enl rcS 6i ovk dira^iti tfiavTOv tUv npdJTUJv (v r^t ^ovqt Tqt AyyXnqi' tinep ovv 
Kol AaviriX '6 larpos il^og tcov ev Totj ^apjxaKoiS' 



INTERCHAPTER XIII. 

A PEEP FROM BEHIND THE CURTAIN. 

Ha, ha, ha, now ye will make me to smile. 

To see if I can all men beguile. 

Ha, my name, my name would ye so fain know ? 

Yes, I wis, shall ye, and that with all speed. 
I have forgot it, therefore I cannot show. 

A, a, now I have it ! I have it indeed ! 
My name is Ambidexter, I signify one 
That with both hands finely can play. 

King Camhyses. 

But the question has been mooted in the literary and ceru- 
x?an circles of the metropolis, whether this book be not the 
joint work of two or more authors. And this duality or plu- 
rality of persons in one authorship has been so confidently 
maintained, that if it were possible to yield upon such a 
point to any display of evidence and weight of authority, I 
must have been argued out of my own indivisible individ- 
uahty. 

Fort bien ! Je le soutiens par la grande raison 
Qu'ainsi I'a fait des dieux la puissance supreme; 
Et qu'il n'est pas en moi de pouvoir dire non, 
Et d'etre un autre que moi-meme.* 

Sometimes 1 have been supposed to be the unknown Beau- 
mont of some equally unknown Fletcher — the moiety of a 
Siamese duplicate, or the third part of a Geryonite triplicity ; 
the fourth of a quaternion of partners, or a fifth of a Smec- 
tymnuan association. Nay, 1 know not whether they have 
not cut me down to the dimensions of a tailor, and dwindled 
me into the ninth part of an author ! 

Me to be thus served! me, who am an integral, to be thus 
split into fractions! me, a poor unit of humanity, to be 
treated like a polypus under the scissors of an experimental 
naturalist, or unnaturalist. 



* Moliere. 



218 THE DOCTOR. 

The reasons assigned in support of this pluri-personal 
hypothesis are, first, the supposed discrepancy of humour 
and taste apparent in the different parts of the book. Oh 
men ignorant of humorology ! more ignorant of psychology ! 
and most ignorant of Pantagruelisra ! 

Secondly, the prodigal expenditure of mottoes and quota- 
tions, which they think could only have been supported by 
means of a picknick contribution. Oh men whose dihgence is 
little, whose reading less, and whose sagacity least of all ! 

Yet looking at this fancy of the public — a creature enter- 
tained with many fancies, beset with many tormenting 
spirits, and provided with more than the four legs and two 
voices which were hastily attributed to the son of Sycorax 
— a creature which, though it be the fashion of the times to 
seek for shelter under its gaberdine, is, by this good light, 
*' a very shallow monster," " a most poor credulous mon- 
ster !" I say, looking at this fancy of the public in that 
temper with which it is my wish to regard everything, me- 
thinks I should be flattered by it, and pleased (if anything 
flattering could please me) by having it supposed upon such 
grounds, that this book, like the Satyre Menippee, is the com- 
position of several "bons et gentils esprits du tems — dans 
lequel souz paroles et allegations pleines de raillerie, ils bou- 
fonnerent, comme en riant le vray se pent dire ;" and which 
" ils firent, selon leurs humeurs, caprices et intelligences, en 
telle sorte qu'il se peut dire qu'ils n'ont rien oublie de ce qui 
se peut dire pour servir de perfection a cet ouvrage, qui bien 
entendu sera grandement estime par la posterite."* 

The same thing occurred in the case of Gulliver's Travels, 
and in that case Arbuthnot thought reasonably ; " for," said 
he, " if this book were to be deciphered merely from a view 
of it, without any hints, or secret history, this would be a 
very natural conclusion : we should be apt to fancy it the 
production of two or three persons, who want neither wit 
nor humour, but who are very full of themselves, and hold 
the rest of mankind in great contempt; who think suflficient 
regard is not paid to their merit by those in power, for which 
reason they rail at them ; who have written some pieces 
with success and applause, and therefore presume that what- 
ever comes from them must be implicitly received by the 
public. In this last particular they are certainly right ; for 
the superficial people of the town, who have no judgment of 
their own, are presently amused by a great name : tell them, 
by way of a secret, that such a thing is Dr. Swift's, Mr. 
Pope's, or any other person's of note and genius, and imme- 
diately it flies about like wildfire."! 

If the book of the doctor, instead of contmuing to appear, 

* Cheverny. t Gulliver deciphered. 



THE DOCTOR. 219 

as it originally went forth, simplex munditiis, with its own 
pithy, comprehensive, and well-considered title, were to 
have a name constructed for it of composite initials, like the 
joint-stock volume of the five Puritanical ministers above 
referred to, once so well known, but now preserved from 
utter oblivion by nothing but that name — vox et prcBterea 
nihil; if, I say, the book of the doctor were in like manner 
to be denominated according to one or other of the various 
schemes of bibliogony which have been devised for explain- 
ing its phenomena, the reader might be expected in good 
earnest to exclaim, 

Bless us ! what a word on 
A title page is this ! 

For among other varieties, the following present themselves 
for choice : — 

Isdis. 

Roso. 

Heta. 

Harco. 

Samro. 

Grobe. 

Theho. 

Heneco. 

Thojama. 

Johofre. 

Reverne. 

Hetaroso. 

Walaroso. 

Rosogrobe. 

Venarchly. 

Satacoroso. 

Samrothomo. 

Verevfrawra. 

Isdisbendis. 

Harcoheneco. 

Henecosaheco. 

Thehojowicro. 

Rosohenecoharco. 

Thehojowicrogecro. 

Harcohenecosaheco. 

Satacoharcojotacohenecosaheco. 



And thus, my Monster of the Isle, while I have listened 
and looked on like a spectator at a game of blind-man's-buff, 
or at a blindfold boat race, have you, with your errabund 



220 THE DOCTOR. 

guesses, veering to all points of the literary compass, amused 
the many-humoured yet single-minded Pantagruelist, the 
quotationipotent mottocrat, the entire unit, the single and 
whole homo, who subscribes himself, 

with all sincerity and good-will, 

Most delicate Monster, 

and with just as much respect as you deserve, 

not your's. or anybody's humble servant, 

(saving always that he is the king's dutiful subject,) 

and not your's, but his own, to command, 

KeWINT-HEKA- WERNER. 



THE END. 













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